LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

" BX5/33 

@|ap. iapt^rigfjt Ifu. 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE 



By Prebendary Webb-Peploe 



THE LIFE OF PRIVILEGE; or, Possession, 
Peace, and Power, being the Report of 
Addresses delivered at the Northfield Bible 
Conference, 1895. i2mo, cloth, $1.00. 

THE VICTORIOUS LIFE, the Post-Conference 
Addresses delivered at East Northfield, 
Mass., August, 1895. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 



The Baker & Taylor Co. 

5 & 7 East Sixteenth Street 

NEW YORK 



THE 

VICTORIOUS LIFE 



THE POST-CONFERENCE ADDRESSES 
DELIVERED AT EAST NORTHFIELD, MASS., AUGUST 1 7-25, 1 895 



Rev. H. W. WEBB-PEPLOE 

PREBENDARY OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON 



EDITED BY 

DELAVAN L. PIERSON 



Kai avrrj edriv ff vikt] 1) viK7]6a6a rdv Kodjuov, 

7} Tti(S ti 5 yjLiaiv. — I. John v. 4. 

tod 8e Oecp x^-P 1 ^ T( P Sidovri fffiiv to vikos 

did rov Kvpiov i)j.igjv 'h/crov Xpidrov. — I. Cor. xv. 57. 



NEW YORK 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 

5 and 7 East i6th Street 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1896 

BY 

The Baker & Taylor Co. 



PRINTED BY 
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NE W YORK, U. 8 A. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The visit of Rev. Prebendary H. W. Webb- 
Peploe to this country, in the summer of 1895, 
is an event not likely to be forgotten by any of 
those who shared the privilege of hearing him, 
or even of reading the careful reports of his 
addresses preserved in the "Northfield Echoes." 

Prebendary Webb-Peploe is well known in 
Great Britain as the head of the Evangelical or 
Low Church party in the Anglican Church, and 
one of the chief promoters of the Keswick move- 
ment, which has been so closely associated with 
the advance of spiritual life as to come to repre- 
sent almost a new era of practical religious 
thought and experience. As was remarked by 
one of the English visitors at the Northfield 
Conference, last summer, " there is no need of 
any one's going to Keswick who was at North- 
held in August last ; for the cream of Keswick 
teaching was to be found there. ' ' 

This remarkable man, Prebendary Webb-Pep- 
loe, is yet living, and words which might be 
fitting to utter of the dead, lack delicacy and 
propriety, when they anticipate such departure 



INTRODUCTION. 



for the higher sphere. But it is no fulsome 
compliment to say that God has given him a 
very remarkable and unusual combination of 
elements, which together constitute the teaching 
faculty. The Bible is his great text-book, and 
of that book he is as thorough a master as any 
man living. His long and laborious studies of 
the Word of God, joined to a peculiarly keen 
and subtle power of analysis, and a really 
phenomenal memory, enable him to outline a 
whole book and cite chapter and verse in rapid 
succession, as he traces the development of a 
doctrinal or practical truth from Genesis to 
Revelation. 

But best of all, his teachings are illustrated and 
illuminated by an experience which gives unique 
authority and unction to his utterance-. There 
is that nameless charm which always invests 
the speech of one who speaks what he knows 
and testifies what he has seen. There is also a 
personal practical grip to his teaching. It takes 
hold and will not let go. It seems so reason- 
able, Scriptural, resistless, that the hearer feels 
himself as in a vise. The will cannot easily 
escape vital decisions. Unbelief is rebuked and 
made to seem both too wrong and too absurd to 
be longer cherished. 

A book lacks the strange aroma of a personal 
presence; and it may seem almost vain to 
attempt to reproduce on the printed page the 



INTRODUCTION. 



v 



charm of a rapidly spoken, cumulative, urgent, 
magnetic address. But these addresses have 
been edited with consummate care, so that they 
may be adapted to the printed page, and they 
retain so much of their original power that they 
will be found replete with suggestion, original 
thought, convincing argument, pertinent illus- 
tration, and all the best qualities of the most 
helpful and stimulating reading on these grand 
themes. We risk nothing in adding that no 
man or woman who devoutly reads them will 
ever consent to part with the volume that con- 
tains them, except with the purpose of scattering 
the seed which promises such a harvest in holy 
lives and consecrated character. 

Arthur T. Pierson, 

1127 Dean Street, Brooklyn, N % F. 
December, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. — The Spirit and the Believer - - 9 
II. — The Second Coming of Our Lord - 37 



III. — What God Hath Cleansed - - 52 

IV. — The Prepared Messenger - 65 
V.— The Way of Blessing - - 78 

VI. — How to Meet Temptation - 98 

VII.— The Servant of God - 128 

VIII.— The Faithful Lord 152 

IX.— Stand Fast 171 

X.— The Daily Portion .... 193 



EXPLANATORY NOTE. 



It is only due to Prebendary Webb-Peploe to 
say that lie lias been unable to correct the 
reports of any of the addresses which appear in 
this volume with the exception of that on ' ' The 
Spirit and the Believer, ' ' therefore any mistakes 
which may have crept into this volume should 
not be charged to his account. 

Owing to the tardy decision to report and 
publish these addresses, three of them were not 
taken down by our stenographer. " The Second 
Coming of our Lord ' ' and ' ' What God Hath 
Cleansed," are taken from a long-hand report 
by the editor, and ' ' The Prepared Messenger ' ' 
was compiled from very meager notes taken by 
various other persons. This will explain the 
comparative lack of fullness in the reports of 
these three addresses. 

D. L. P. 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 



u Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of 
the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess ; but 
be filled with the Spirit " or, as the Greek has it, " in Spirit." — 
Eph. v. 17, 18. 

As the declarations or revelations of God are 
to be accepted with implicit faith, when they tell 
us of a salvation infinitely beyond anything we 
could have expected or hoped for ; so the com- 
mands of God are to be received with implicit 
faith, when they bid us do things far beyond 
anything we could expect to see carried out in 
ourselves. True faith bows before the Word of 
God ; for that word can only convey Divine facts 
or principles concerning the salvation accom- 
plished for us. We do wisely to lay our heads 
in the dust ; or we may be tempted to say that 
the thing revealed is impossible for us, because 
it is beyond what we could have expected to be 
true. When, therefore, God lays upon us a 
command, we should say at once, ' ' It must be 
true and possible ; ' ' though by nature we may 
be inclined to think, " It is impossible ; and 



10 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



could never be carried out in such a creature as 
I am." Exactly as we say to a poor helpless 
inquiring soul "This is the record, that God 
hath given to us eternal life, and that life is in 
his Son. ... He that believeth not God hath 
made him a liar ; ' ' so, when we come to a com- 
mand that has relation to our progress in spirit- 
ual life, we ought to remember that the record 
is the word that God hath spoken to us ; that 
it is for us to accept it as his command to us indi- 
vidually; that it must be possible for God to 
carry it out in the creature; and that by dis- 
belief we make God a liar. 

To the child of God, yearning for holiness, 
there is something exceedingly precious and 
delightful in approaching a command that seems 
to be naturally impossible; because he realizes 
that the Lord gave the word, and that it is for 
the Lord to make possible of fulfillment in his 
child that which he commands. For surely we 
can say with Augustine, " Give what Thou com- 
mandest, then command what Thou wilt." 
Yea, let God command what he will ; it must be 
carried out ; only on one condition — that we be 
' £ willing in the day of his ipo wer. ' ' 

As we approach this intensely solemn com- 
mand : "Be filled with the Spirit, ' ' there is not 
one of us who would not feel it to be almost 
blasphemous for such words to be expressed by 
mortal man, were it not that they came by inspi- 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 



11 



ration of the Holy Ghost ; and that the man who 
wrote them was empowered by the Spirit to hand 
such words down to the whole Church of God. 
Therefore, it cannot be an impossibility or God 
would never have uttered the commandment. It 
rests upon the creature to see that, according to 
God's plan of fulfilment, it shall be carried out 
in him ; and that he shall not thwart or hinder 
the will of God by unbelief, or by any continu- 
ance in that which is evil. It is an exceedingly 
solemn thing to take up such a command, and to 
believe that what hitherto seemed so absolutely 
beyond our reach is intended by God for us all ; 
for while we hear again and again of aspirations 
after the blessings that would come from being 
filled with the Spirit, very few of God's children 
seem to believe that the fault is in themselves if 
it is not realized ; or that the hindrance cannot 
lie with God, but must lie with us, if his will is 
not completely carried out. With regard to all 
such commands, the full and final accomplish- 
ment of them must wait for the day when our 
bodies shall be fashioned like the body of the 
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ; because our 
body, being still subject to corruption, cannot 
receive into the corrupt parts that Spirit of God 
which is everlasting life, and which knows no 
taint of corruption. 

The question for us is this : — How near to the 
accomplishment of God's will is it possible for 



12 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



the believer to come in the life that now is, while 
waiting for the full and absolute perfection of 
accomplishment at the day of the Lord's appear- 
ing ? The great grief and shame that lie upon the 
Church is that as a whole she is willing to remain 
so far away from God's holy purpose. For in- 
stance, Christ says, "Be ye perfect," or, "Ye 
shall be perfect as your Father in Heaven is per- 
fect; " and the majority of Christians say that 
because there is no experimental perfection to be 
had in this world, therefore they will not make 
an essay to see how nearly they can reach perfec- 
tion in this life. Dogmatic theology says that the 
Holy Ghost cannot pervade that which is corrupt, 
therefore the majority seem to think they may 
be content to live a life very, very far below that 
spiritual life traced in God's Holy Word. 

We are desirous of ascertaining how near to 
this glorious conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ 
we may attain by simple acceptance of God's 
purpose for our lives, and how near we may 
come in this world of sin to knowing even 
as we are known by the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Therefore, as we approach the solemn subject, 
my first charge is : — Hinder not the will of God by a 
spirit of unbelief; by limiting the Holy One of Israel ; 
because you thereby reject his holy counsel and 
purpose for you. Train your souls in a spirit 
of receptivity, and by the exercise of faith, to 
take all that God himself can give. Be deter- 



THE SPIRIT AXD THE BELIEVER. 



13 



mined that "your whole spirit, soul and body" — 
whatever department of your being you can deal 
with — shall be placed submissively at the dis- 
posal of God, to know, to receive, and to enjoy, 
everything that God can possibly give you, while 
you are, alas, in the body of corruption. 

There are many differences of opinion as to 
how far we can be filled with the Spirit ; as to 
the means by which this fullness is to be secured ; 
as to what will be the signs of being filled ; and 
what are the hindrances in ourselves, to our yield- 
ing ample and implicit obedience to the command- 
ment of the Lord. I shall therefore divide my 
subject into three special branches, which I 
would entitle : — 

I. The Universal Endowment with the Holy 
Ghost, which God has bestowed upon the Church 
and the world. 

II. The Individual Enduement with God the 
Holy Ghost, which takes place with regard to 
every soul when it is brought into the knowledge 
of its acceptance in Christ Jesus, and is made 
alive unto God through Him. 

III. The Personal Enjoyment which may be 
known by the saint as he progresses, or accepts 
continually more and more of the gift that God 
has bestowed upon him. 

We ought not to feel that we are entering 
upon controversy or hurting one another's feel- 
ings, because terms are used that slightly differ 



14 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



from those which our brethren might employ. 
We are all equally interested in discovering the 
truth, and I desire to set forth exactly what 
the Word of God says. 

I. Look, first, at the universal endowment 
with God the Holy Ghost as a gift. God's 
Word makes it clear that there has bee a 
bestowed once for all the gift by God of the 
Holy Ghost as a person; and it would be as 
inconceivable that we should ask God to send 
his Son to be born again in the flesh, and to pass 
again through the great work of our redemption, 
as it is for us (reasonably and theologically and 
Biblically) to ask God to give again the gift of 
the Holy Ghost, which he has once for all 
bestowed. But this will not prevent a constant 
repetition of earnest prayer for the experience 
described in Luke xi. 13: " If ye then, being 
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 
children, how much more shall your Heavenly 
Father give Holy Spirit to them that ask him ! ' ' 
There is no article ' ' the ' ' in that passage ; the 
word is partitive, not personal; it is "Holy 
Spirit. ' ' There is no doubt that none of us have 
realized the fullness of the possibilities that 
might be expected concerning the gift, or 
powers, or qualities of this ' ' Holy Ghost ; ' ' and 
that the holiest will always be conscious of 
needing more. It is one thing for me to ask 
God to give me more of the Spirit in my own per- 



THE SPIRIT AXD THE BELIEVER. 



15 



sonal enjoyment; it is another thing to ask God 
to give Ms own perf ect gift again from heaven, 
as thongh he never had bestowed f£ It is one 
thing to recognize that I have failed to take and 
to nse what my Father has bestowed; it is 
another thing to charge my Father with not 
having bestowed what he says he has given. 

God's word tells ns plainly that the Holy Ghost 
is already given as The universal income of the 
Church. He is called " the earnest of our in- 
heritance." TTe shall know the full extent of 
our inheritance when we see Jesus as he is, but 
meanwhile the Holy Ghost is described as " the 
earnest." A man may possess a splendid income 
and yet may never have seen his magnificent 
property. AYhat we enjoy of our income is the 
measure of holiness which we really possess and 
exhibit in this life. Holiness may be said to be 
the expenditure of income received through God's 
gift of the Holy Spirit. Hereafter the inheri- 
tance will be ours in its fullness ; then we shall 
know as we are knowu. 

In order to be assured that there has been an 
actual bestowment, once for all, of the Person of 
God "The Holy Ghost," as distinguished from 
his qualities, turn to God's Word, and judge ye 
what is said ! Look first into the Old Testament 
Scriptures, and see the nature of the promises 
concerning the Spirit. Jesus bids his disciples 
look for the Holy Ghost as "the promise of the 



16 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Father." What is the nature of that promise? 
— First there is the thought in Psalm lxviii. 18, 
that the Jesus Christ ascending on high, 

led captivity captive, to "receive gifts for men." 
If we turn to St. Paul's declaration of the fulfill- 
ment in Ephesians iv. 8, we find that he changes 
the words to read : ' ' He led captivity captive 
and gave gifts unto men. " In the former case 
it was " received gifts for men;" in the latter 
case, after Pentecost, he "gave gifts unto men." 
Therefore, clearly, that promise or prophecy 
has been fulfilled. 

With regard to the promises which distinc- 
tively mark God's intention to give the Holy 
Ghost, turn to Isaiah xliv. 3 : "I will pour water 
upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the 
dry ground ; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed 
and my blessings upon thine offspring. ' ' Again 
in Isaiah xxxii. 15, the prophet said that full 
blessings could not come upon the land " uutil 
the Spirit be poured upon us from on high." 
Again God, by the mouth of the prophet 
Ezekiel, says : "I will put my Spirit within you, 
and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye 
shall keep my judgments " (Ezekiel xxxvi. 27). 
"I have poured out my Spirit upon the house 
of Israel, saith the Lord God ' ' (Ezekiel xxxix. 
26). And later on in the same prophecy : It is 
a solemn question when these words shall have 
received their fulfillment. Turn next to Zacha- 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER 17 



riah xii. 10, and read : "I will pour upon the 
house of David, and upon the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplica- 
tions ; and they shall look upon me whom they 
have pierced. " I cannot deal fully with these 
texts, but simply point them out that you may 
study them and judge for yourselves to what 
particular period of history they refer. 

We now come to the great passage in Joel ii. 
28, 29, which must always be considered the 
special promise for this dispensation : "I will 
pour out my Spirit upon all flesh ; and your sons 
and your daughters shall prophecy, your old 
men shall dream dreams, your young 'men shall 
see visions; and also upon the servants and 
upon the handmaids in those days will I pour 
out my Spirit. ' ' I have noted several texts that 
speak of God's " pouring out" of his Spirit, 
and this one is the key text to the whole, because 
in Acts ii. 16 the apostle Peter makes use of a 
most remarkable expression, as far as I know> 
found nowhere else in the Bible, with regard 
to the fulfillment of a prophecy. He says : 
' 6 This is that which was spoken by the prophet 
Joel. ' ' In every other case in the New Testament 
you read, "That it might be fulfilled" (show- 
ing that it is an application) ; or " as the 
prophet has said" (showing that the writer 
takes up the prophet's words). But here Peter 
says : " This is that which teas spoken by Joel." 



13 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



I have three great authorities for my interpre- 
tation of these words. Dr. Pussy, a very eminent 
theologian, says in his "Commentary on the 
Minor Prophets " : " Concerning this promise of 
the Spirit, God says, I will pour out, i. e. , give 
largely; as though he would empty out him 
who is Infinite, so that there should be no meas- 
ure of his giving, save our capacity for receiving. ' ' 
Rev. H. C. G. Moule, who is likewise considered 
no mean authority, says in his ' ' Outlines of 
Christian Doctrine " (p. 127) : " As the Messianic 
Age approaches, the prophecies indicate a com- 
ing universal ' effusion ' of the Spirit ( ' upon 
all fleshy Joel ii. 28). The universality seems to 
refer to an extension to all races and ranks of 
men. The New Testament (Acts ii. 16-21) 
finds this fulfilled at Pentecost, when represen- 
tatives of the race received the Gospel, and the 
universal believing Church definitely began to 
be under the power of the Spirit. True, that 
beginning has a future in which all the ends of 
the world shall remember and turn unto the 
Lord (Psalm xxii. 27). Limits upon the work 
of grace at one period are no proof that it will 
be always limited ; but the passages here in ques- 
tion indicate not so much a work in every indi- 
vidual, as a world-wide extension of the Spirit's 
full action upon individuals, resulting in union 
with Christ in his Church universal." 

Dr. Wordsworth says that the pouring of the 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 19 

Spirit ' ' upon all flesh ' ' received its fulfillment 
in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, because 
the Word was made flesh ; and that now this 
blessing is to be poured through him upon us ; 
so, as he received the fullness of the Spirit, the 
fullness of the Spirit was poured down on him, 
and through him upon all flesh that would 
take it. 

With these three great authorities before us 
we can have no hesitation, I think, in under- 
standing that the term "upon all flesh" does 
not mean upon each individual man, but is to 
be taken generically and that the coming down 
or descent of the Holy Ghost was to be on 
human flesh as a whole. The question is then : 
Has this promise ever received any distinct 
fulfillment? 

The Lord Jesus, before he passed away, spoke 
in John xiv., of sending a Person, Whom my 
Father will send in my name" (ver. 26); and 
"Whom I will send'" "(xv. 26). In Acts ii., 
where we find the declaration that the prophecy 
has been fulfilled, the apostle Peter, quoting the 
prophecy, says (ver. 17): — "It shall come to 
pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour 
out of my Spirit on all flesh." In ver. 33 
he uses the same word in the Greek : — " Being by 
the right hand' of God exalted, and having 
received of the Father the promise of the Holy 
Ghost, he liath poured out this which ye now 



20 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



see and hear." So that, according to these 
prophecies, according to the promise of the Lord 
Jesus, and according to the declaration of Peter, 
we should say that there has been once for all 
a historical fulfillment in the Advent of the Holy 
Ghost as a Person, exactly as there was in the 
Advent of the Word made flesh when Jesus 
Christ came down from heaven to earth. Such 
an advent we all would acknowledge to have 
taken place on that solemn day of Pentecost on 
which Peter speaks. Can the spirit then be said 
to be constantly ' ' descending " or " being 
poured out," as on Pentecost day? 

There are special terms used concerning the 
advent of the Holy Ghost as person. When 
Jesus Christ came, John the Baptist spoke of 
him as one who should do all his work in the 
power of the Holy Ghost ; and in connection 
with our Lord's baptism we notice some remarka- 
ble facts. In Matt. iii. 16 we read that, as Jesus 
came out of the water, ' 4 the heavens were 
opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending 
like a dove and lighting upon Him. Mark 
these two terms. First there is the universal 
endowment of Christ as the Second Adam by 
the descent of the Holy Ghost from heaven 
at his baptism. Then there is the individual 
enduement of the Master as the " Son of Man" 
by the Holy Ghost lighting upon (or coming 
upon) him, so that the Spirit claimed him for 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 



21 



his own (see the same thoughts expressed in 
John i. 33). Thus we have an historical ful- 
fillment in Christ at his baptism, when the Holy 
Ghost descended and lighted upon him; and 
then the historical fulfillment for the Church 
on the day of Pentecost with its glorious results. 

In the fulfillment of the prophecy that the 
Spirit should be poured upon all flesh, there 
would appear to be three manifestations of 
the fact that the descent had taken place, by 
the use of the term "falling upon," which 
occurs only three times in the Acts. It is parti- 
tive in the sense that it comes upon three 
generic classes of men; but absolute in the 
sense that these three classes generically 
embrace all flesh. From Acts ii. we know how 
the Holy Ghost descended upon those who were 
called saints in Jerusalem, but here this term is 
not used. In chap. xi. 15 the Apostle says, con- 
cerning the Gentiles: — "The Holy Ghost fell 
on them as on us at the beginning." There is 
the historical declaration of the Holy Ghost 
having descended as a Person at Pentecost; 
and thus he "fell upon" the Israelites: for 
they were all Israelites who then knew the 
Lord, and were waiting for the fulfillment of the 
promise. 

The next instance in the Acts is where the 
Spirit fell on the Samaritans, who were a half- 
breed race, a mixture of Israel with the Gentiles 



22 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



as we know from II. Kings xvii. In Acts viii. 
we are told that Peter and John went down to 
Samaria: "Who, when they were come down, 
prayed for them that they might receive the 
Holy Ghost (for as yet he was fallen upon none 
of them). Then they laid their hands upon 
them, and they received the Holy Ghost." He 
had fallen upon Israel, and now He fell 
on the Samaritans. In Acts x. 44, we have 
the record of his falling on the Gentiles, as 
already mentioned : ' 6 The Holy Ghost fell on 
all them which heard the word, ' ' i. e. , the cen- 
turion and his household. 

Thus, we have these remarkable facts. First, 
the Holy Ghost descended upon the Lord Jesus 
as representative Man. Then Christ went back 
to heaven, and at Pentecost the Holy Ghost 
descended as a Person, and became the absolute 
gift of God to men. There is a generic fulfillment 
of God's promise upon the Israelite, the half- 
breed and the pure Gentile. Thus all mankind 
are included, and you find the Holy Ghost 
"poured out," and "descended" or "fallen 
upon " all flesh according to the promises con- 
tained in the Old Testament prophecy. This, as 
I understand it, is the historical fulfillment of 
God's blessed intention of Love and Grace, and 
is what I call ' 4 The universal endowment, or 
gift to man, of God The Holy Ghost." 

Consider next, the individual ekduement, 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 



23 



which is a totally distinct thing. The first fact 
is one in which God acts alone ; man has no part 
in it whatever. In this second stage there is 
partly the work of God, and partly the work of 
man; a mixture of the objective and the subjec- 
tive. And as I look for this individual endue- 
ment, what do I find? That when a man — any 
man, no matter who — is dealt with by God, the 
Spirit comes to work in him a process of the 
conviction of sin, of righteousness, and of judg- 
ment (John xvi. 8). The moment a man receives 
the blessed truth that God was in Christ saving 
him, he receives regeneration ; he is a saved 
soul, and is given a new life. At that moment 
there is in him, first, the old natural life which 
remains with us to the end of our existence, and 
secondly, the new Spirit life which God the Holy 
Ghost has bestowed. What has the man now 
received? Just this gift of God, the blessed gift 
of the Holy Ghost, and in him the life of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. The moment he takes these, 
he is endued with the Holy Spirit. ' £ If any 
man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of 
his." Therefore, all the Church are as one upon 
the simple fact that when we believe, we are 
partakers of the Holy Ghost. What some of us 
do not agree upon is the extent of the income that 
we now possess, or the extent to which we ought 
to enjoy God's absolute gift. 

What has really happened to the regenerate ? 



24 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



St. Paul says, in Gal. iv. 6, " God hath sent fortli 
the Spirit of his Son into your hearts crying, 
' Abba, Father.'" " The babe's cry and the 
man's cry put together," as one old writer ex- 
presses it. Again, St. Paul says (II. Tim. i. 7), 
" God hath given to us the spirit of power, of 
love, and of a sound mind." We have, more- 
over, as he says in Rom. viii. 15, "not received 
the spirit of bondage, but we have received the 
Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry 'Abba, 
Father.' " As Christians, we are not "waiting 
for the promise ' ' ; but we have received the 
blessed Spirit of liberty and of power. It is 
ours as a gift from God, and the individual 
enduement has taken place, for the Holy Spirit 
has come upon us at the moment of our new 
birth. 

Notice again, how it was with the Lord Jesus 
Christ. In Matt. iii. 16, we are told that the 
Holy Ghost descended and lighted upon him. 
Then he says to his disciples (Acts i. 8). "Ye 
shall receive power after the Holy Ghost is come 
upon you." Again (Acts xix. 6), "When 
Paul laid his hands upon them [the disciples at 
Ephesus] the Holy Ghost came upon them." 
This word ' ' came upon " is a totally different 
word from that translated " descended." Christ 
received the Holy Ghost after he had descended. 
The Spirit descended first and then came upon 
Christ. So that while God has given the gift of 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 25 

the Holy Ghost as a Person, there comes the 
partitive distribution on each individual soul 
who is made alive unto God. Each true believer 
has the Holy Ghost as his own spiritual income ; 
but alas ! he knows but little of Him yet. 

I believe that I have noted every text in my 
Bible, where the Spirit is mentioned, and I find 
(though some differ with me) that, wherever the 
Person of the Holy Ghost is mentioned, you 
have the article ' ' the, ' ' but wherever the quali- 
ties or gifts of the Spirit are put before us, 
the name is without the article. You will 
never find any man, not even the Lord Jesus 
Christ, who is described as being (I do not say 
that the Lord Jesus was not; I only say that we 
do not read of him being), as a man, full of 
the Person of the Holy Ghost, i. e. , where the 
article is used, which denotes the Person, and 
not quality. 

In Luke iv. 1, this distinction is remarkably 
preserved : ' ' Jesus, being full of (the) Holy 
Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by 
the Spirit." In the first part of the sentence 
there is no article; it is his subjective experi- 
ence. In the second clause it is an objective 
fact, an historical truth — the Holy Ghost led 
him into the wilderness. Of course I do not 
here touch upon our Lord's divinity; I am 
simply speaking of him in his humanity, and as 
the Word of God speaks of him. 



26 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



When we are born into the kingdom of God, 
he gives to each of ns the Holy Ghost, but we 
cannot take him in; he is far beyond our 
capacity. Therefore, all that we enjoy is ' ' Holy 
Ghost ; ' ' but that does not prove that we have 
not received, as a gift from God, our whole 
income. It is ours, but we are not " of full 
age," or sufficiently "perfect',' (Heb. v. 4) to 
be able to enjoy our inheritance. God allows 
us to take and use what we can use properly, 
but we are such babes that we do not know how 
to use the income that he waits to give. The 
moment we are perfected, he will allow us to 
take all our possession. So there comes the 
question, — How much can we enjoy or spend of 
our income on earth? Certainly, there is room 
here for much self-reproach, and for wider and 
nobler aspirations for the future. 

III. Having seen that the individual indue- 
ment takes place at the new birth, we come now 
to consider the third part of the subject. There 
is a most solemn distinction between the general 
endowment, or the individual enduement, by 
God, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, and man's 
personal enjoyment of the gift from the 
moment that he has received it. 

We should, perhaps, best explain what it is to 
be ' 6 filled with the Spirit, " if we ask ourselves 
what the Holy Ghost is meant to be to those who 
receive him at all from God. I may not stay to 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 27 

speak much of his absolute personality as God. 
He is described as ' ' the Spirit of the Father ; ' ' 
"the Spirit of the Son;" "the Spirit of God;" 
' c the Spirit of Christ. ' ' But when we speak of 
his qualities, we. find him described under many 
diiferent terms — "the Spirit of power, of love, 
and of a sound mind," " the Spirit of wisdom," 
and so on. In Isaiah xi. 2, 3, the Lord Jesus 
Christ is spoken of as having a sevenfold power 
of the Spirit upon him ; and what he was to 
Christ as man, I humbly believe he is meant to 
be to us ; that is to say, we ought to know him 
and use him, as the Lord Jesus did, up to the 
measure of the possibility in which faith can 
enable us to appropriate and enjoy our glorious 
possession. 

There are no less than seven figures by which 
the Holy Ghost is described at different times 
in the Scriptures. First, he is compared to water. 
At the very outset of our spiritual career, we 
are buried by baptism into death ; even as when 
mankind were buried by water under the flood. 
But as God put Noah and his family into the 
Ark, which is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, so 
we are not only buried in but ' ' saved by water, ' ' 
when " by one Spirit (Greek : "in one Spirit ") 
we are all baptized into one body. ' ' Again he 
is water, that he may be to us as a refreshing 
draught, to cheer us in the struggle and toil of 
daily life. He is spoken of also as fire to purify 



28 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



and destroy whatever is evil in us ; also to illu- 
minate, invigorate and warm. He is oil, to 
soothe and comfort and to give us peace. He is 
wind, to permeate every part of our being by 
the searching and cleansing power of God. 
Then we come to a solemn thought. He is a 
seal, stamping us with the very image of God, 
and setting Christ's mark upon us, as he claims 
us for his own ; for ' ' we, beholding as in a glass 
the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same 
image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit 
of the Lord." Again, he is "wine that maketh 
glad the heart of man." And lastly you read 
of him as the dote, but that apparently is not 
for us. It is a remarkable fact that nearly all 
the others are qualitative or partitive — what we 
call elements. But as the dove he came upon 
Christ alone as a living manifestation and 
embodiment of the Spirit in his work — He being 
the true representative Man, to whom for us the 
Spirit was given without measure (John iii. 34). 

Now we, as men, are called to be filled ; and, 
in order that we may be so filled, the question 
arises, what does the expression mean in this 
particular passage ? There are two words used 
with regard to "filling." One is 7t\r}prjs, the 
adjective, and the verb akin to it, itk-qpooo 
which expresses the normal, or constant con- 
dition. But there is another word, nXrjo'O^, 
which signifies an abnormal or special condition, 



THE SPIRIT AXD THE BELIEVER. 



29 



and which also is frequently found in the Acts of 
the Apostles. The distinctive use of these several 
words should be most carefully noted in all the 
passages where they occur. I think that it is 
the idea conveyed by this latter word of which 
some men are thinking when they speak 
about the " baptism of the Spirit " ; little recog- 
nizing that that expression is absolutely 
un-Biblical, as it never occurs once in the whole 
Bible. 

There are five passages that speak of Christ 
doing his great work of baptism with regard to 
the Spirit. The first is Matthew iii. 11, and 
Mark i. 8, where John the Baptist in preaching 
uses the words: "He shall baptize you in" — 
not with — "Holy Ghost." In Luke iii. 16, 
there is the same expression: "In Holy Ghost 
and in fire.'' In John i. 33, we read again: 
"He shall baptize in Holy Ghost." Christ 
himself makes the promise once : " Ye shall be 
baptized in Holy Ghost not many days hence " 
(Acts i. o). There are these five promises ; but 
it is only once alluded to as a fact accomplished. 
This is very remarkable. TYe find it in Acts xi. 
15, 16, where the Apostle Peter is describing 
the baptism "in Holy Ghost." In everyone 
of these passages we observe that the word 
"in" is used, not "with." The great accom- 
plishment of it is declared by Peter to have 
been at the day of Pentecost ; there is a fulfill- 



30 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



ment of it also in the case of the Gentiles, upon 
whom the Holy Ghost descended. So that 
when the Holy Ghost descended upon all flesh, 
the baptism of humanity generically took place. 
With regard to the individual, this should take 
place at his baptism. In his "Veni Creator" 
(p. 20), Mr. Moule says that baptism is the 
initial act by which a man is introduced into the 
Church, and therefore baptism with the Spirit, 
the same as baptism with water, must be an initial 
act. The moment the man commences to live, 
he is baptized in the Holy Ghost. 

I humbly believe that there is no after-baptism 
in or by the Holy Ghost for any man from the 
moment he has become a child of God. He 
simply remains in the element into which he was 
introduced, and it is his own fault if he be not 
perpetually drinking in the heavenly element 
which now surrounds him. The Holy Ghost is 
to the soul what pure air is to the body. 
6 ' Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it. ' ' At 
the same moment that spiritually he is baptized 
into the death of Christ, he is also quickened in 
or by the Spirit. That is what St. Paul says in 
I. Corinthians xii. 13 : "By (or in) one Spirit we 
are all baptized into one body." He goes on to 
say : 6 ' And have all been made to drink (into) 
one Spirit. ' ' I seldom find these words spoken 
of at all. The Revised Version leaves out the 
word " into," and we read, "have all been made 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 31 

to drink one Spirit." Whose fault is it if, as 
the beloved of the Bridegroom, we have refused 
to drink abundantly? (Canticles v. 1.) We 
read in I. Corinthians x., that the Israelites 
6 ' were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and 
in the sea." The cloud is the only figure 
describing the Holy Ghost that I did not men- 
tion among the seven, because it is more of a 
type than a figure. It represents the abiding 
presence of God. All Israel, whether spiritual 
or carnal, were baptized, because they were 
Israelites, into the cloud and into the sea. So 
St. Paul says to the carnal Corinthians: " Ye 
were all baptized into (or in) one Spirit, and are 
thus made into one body." Therefore this bap- 
tism in the Spirit is true for all believers, how- 
ever carnal or babe-like they may be. 

What then are we to expect if we cannot again 
be baptized by the Spirit, or with the Spirit, or 
even in the Spirit? The only real question now 
to be answered is : What can we do to be filled 
with (or in) the Spirit? Mark what St. Paul 
says to the Corinthians in his first Epistle, iii. 
16, " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, 
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" 
Again (vi. 19), " Know ye not that your body 
is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, 
and which ye have of God ; and ye are not your 
own? Therefore glorify God in your body, and 
in your spirit which are his." Once again 



32 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



(II. Cor. vi. 16), " God hath said, I will dwell in 
them, and walk in them ; and I will be their 
God, and they shall be my people." 

The Apostle states a fact in all these passages 
— that we are the temple of the Holy Ghost 
already, and have the Holy Ghost in ns. I need 
not refer yon to snch texts as Rom. v. 5, " The 
love of God is shed abroad in yonr hearts by the 
Holy Ghost which is given nnto ns ; " or II. Cor. 
i. 22, where we read that God liatli given unto 
ns "the earnest of the Spirit, in our hearts," 
II. Cor. v. 5, "Who also liatli given onto ns 
the earnest of the Spirit," and many other 
texts, showing that we have received the Holy 
Ghost besides having been baptized into one 
body in one Spirit. " What then shall we do to 
be filled?" What did they do in the days of 
Hezekiah, when the Temple had had all kinds of 
iniqnity and filth brought into it? The priests 
came and purged out all the filth that they 
found, and cast it into the brook Kidron. 
What did they do in Nehemiah's day, when 
Tobiah had filled God's chambers with house- 
hold stuff? The prophet cast it all forth out of 
the Lord's house. What did the Lord Jesus do, 
when the temple was filled with money-changers 
and sellers of merchandise? He made a scourge 
of small cords and drove them all out. 

That is the first step which must be taken by 
us. The moment it is taken I humbly believe 



THE SPIRIT AND THE BELIEVER. 



33 



that the Holy Ghost will rush into our hearts as 
air does into a vacuum when opened ; or as water 
into a vessel when placed under a fountain. 
Hezekiah and the others only cast out all that 
they found ; and we can only cast out all the 
evil that we find. Therefore we are told to wait 
in prayer for the gift of the Spirit. I would 
rather say : Go down on your knees and say like 
David, ' ' Search me, O God, try my heart, and 
see if there be any wicked way in me." It is 
not God who has not given ; it is you who have 
not taken. You have filled the Temple of God 
with your household stuff, and have put the 
money changers and divers kinds of folly into 
the Father's house; therefore, you are not 
filled with the Holy Ghost. Let a man, let the 
Church, go down before God and say : " Search 
me, O God." When he has searched you, he 
will show you things you never knew. You can 
only get rid of what you find ; and God gives no 
further than man can take; and man can take 
only what he knows. Let us go to God and tell 
him of all our sin and folly, and of the pride that 
has prevented us from confessing the evil things 
of which we knew. 

We may all rise to the normal condition of 
the Christian if we are yielded to God ; but if he 
wants some special service from us, he will show 
us that there is something wanting. Then it is 
that by the confession of our need, and by the 



34 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



humble prayer of faith (as in the case of the dis- 
ciples in Acts iv. 31, when they needed boldness 
in the honr of trial) we may find ourselves ' 'filled' ' 
{nXriaBivres) in that department of our being in 
which we lacked the Spirit. This is the only 
form in which a sudden accession can be known, 
and it is obtained by discovery and confession of 
the fact that in that department of our being we 
have not yielded to God. 

There is this difference between the old dis- 
pensation and the new. The Old Testament 
prophets were carried and " borne along" by 
the Spirit (II. Pet. i. 21). The Spirit was 
then rather acting upon, than in, those whom 
he used ; and some people think that if they had 
the Spirit, they would be driven or carried along 
like the prophets of old. But he does not so 
deal with men to-day. We read in Rom. viii. 
14 : "As many as are led by the Spirit;" also in 
Gal. v. 18 : God only leads by his Spirit that 
dwelleth in us ; and He will lead us just so far 
as we are willing to go. He never drives now. 
The Gospel is not a driving dispensation; you 
must be willing to be led. 

But what is to be the result of it all? Notice 
first at the negative results of yielding to the 
Spirit. Look at Gal. v. 16: "Walk in the 
Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the 
flesh." I do not believe that that passage is 
meant to be done away with by the Christian. 



THE SPIRIT AXD THE BELIEVER. 



35 



I have heard it said : "I pity St. Paul when he 
wrote that ; he was in a low, grovelling experi- 
ence." Nay, brethren, the Inst of the flesh is 
in all men to the last. If a man says that he is 
delivered from the flesh, so that it has no longer 
any existence in his experience, he is contradict- 
ing God's Holy Word. The flesh is there, and 
what is the Christian to do? "Walk in the 
Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the 
flesh." The flesh is lusting against the Spirit, 
and the Spirit against the flesh, and you are 
between the two. The question is "To which 
are you going to yield? " Walk in the Spirit, 
because willingly led of the Spirit; and stay 
there all the days of your life ; if you do, you 
will never fulfill the lust of the flesh. 

But what are to be the positive results ? In 
Gal. v. 22 we have the answer. Do not speak 
of the fruits of the Spirit ; it is the fruit of the 
Spirit — nine grapes in one bunch. It is all of 
one Spirit who desires to work one and the same 
blessed fruit in us all. Here are nine beautiful 
grapes, and they all relate to character, rather 
than to conduct. Perhaps you are longing for 
splendid conduct; wanting to go and do some 
great works. God wants you to begin with 
character. The Holy Ghost works character; 
then he can fill you for service ; and assuredly 
God wants all to be thus blessedly filled. It is 
no man's special prerogative, or gift, above his 



36 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



fellows, to be filled in the Spirit. But remem- 
ber that, while the world "resists the Holy 
Ghost, ' ' even a child of God may * ' grieve ' '• and 
4 4 quench" him. 

"Fill the water-pots with water, and bear 
unto the governor of the feast. ' ' Such is the 
command of the Lord Jesus to his servants. 
God deals with you as "servants" to the end. 
The servants must fill the water-pots ; and by 
God's grace take out everything that is not the 
pure water of the Spirit : and when you have 
borne out to the governor of the feast, he will 
say: "Every man at the beginning doth set 
forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, 
then that which is worse ; but thou hast kept 
the good wine until now. ' ' The water of God is 
meant to be poured out of these poor earthen 
and feeble vessels (John vii. 33), and to be 
turned to ' ' wine that cheers the heart of man, ' ' 
even the blessed heavenly wine — not wine of 
earth. When the Lord sees that the water-pots 
are filled with water, he will begin to make use 
of us and to pour out of his riches all over the 
earth. The command of the Lord to each one of 
us is : "Be filled in the Spirit, ' ' and then 
"Yield yourselves unto God." 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUH LORD. 



" The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those 
things which are revealed belong unto us and unto our children 
forever. " — Deuteronomy xxix. 29. 

The study of prophecy is, therefore, profitable 
to ns, especially since as St. Peter writes : " We 
have also a more sure word of prophecy where- 
unto ye do dwell that ye take heed ; 
knowing this first that no prophecy of the 
Scripture is of any private interpretation. For 
the prophecy came not in old time by the will 
of man ; but. holy men of God spake as they 
were moved {^epojxsvoi^ borne along) by the 
Holy Ghost" (II. Peter i. 19-21). Again he 
says: "Of which salvation the prophets have 
inquired and searched diligently; 
searching what, or what manner of time the 
Spirit of Christ which was in them did sig- 
nify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings 
of Christ, and the glory that is to follow. Unto 
whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves 
but unto us they did minister the things which 
are no w reported unto you ; . . . which things 
the angels desire to look into (I. Peter i. 10-12). 



38 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



From these passages we learn that we have a 
more sure word of prophecy even than the voice 
heard npon the Mount, and that the prophets 
themselves studied to understand God's revela- 
tion and could not. We are even better off than 
the angels in our understanding of Gfod's revealed 
prophecies. 

Now look at Titus ii. 11-13: "For the grace 
of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to 
all men (or, that bringeth salvation to all men 
hath appeared), teaching us that, denying ungod- 
liness and worldly lusts we should live soberly, 
righteously and Godly, in this present world; 
Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious 
appearing of the great God and our Saviour, 
Jesus Christ. ' ' Here we notice three facts stated : 
(1.) That the salvation which has appeared is a 
universal salvation. (2.) That it is to teach men 
that they are not to live ungodly or lustful lives 
but, as we might state it, are to live soberly in 
respect to themselves, righteously in respect to 
their neighbors, and Godly in respect to God. 
(3.) That we are to be in the attitude of expect- 
ancy, "looking for that blessed hope and the glo- 
rious appearing " of our Lord. The three things 
refer to three periods — past (the appearance of 
salvation); present (teaching us how to live); 
and future (the glorious appearing of Christ). 

If the prophets of old had to search concern- 
ing the truth which they communicated, may we 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 39 

not hope to gain an understanding by searching 
into the meaning of prophecy ? If not, why has 
prophecy been given to ns? 

The first coming of our Lord has now passed 
into history and the field of investigation and 
speculation is therefore limited. The second 
advent is still in the realm of prophecy, there- 
fore the opportunity for study is almost without 
bounds. Some think that a man who studies 
prophecy is a fool because he can arrive at no 
certain conclusion and because, as they say, it 
makes a man unpractical and visionary. On the 
contrary, however, we find that students of 
prophecy are more practical, more powerful and 
more spiritual than those who ignore it. There 
are fanatics and enthusiasts who preach fool- 
ishness in this sphere, but that is true in any 
great field of thought, and ought not to prevent 
wholesome study. Again we are charged with 
studying in a field of prophecy where there are 
unfathomable difficulties. If, however, we cannot 
come to an understanding of these predictions, 
why are these prophecies given and why are we 
urged to be ready and looking for their fulfill- 
ment. Still further it is said that it is futile to 
teach anything concerning this subject while 
there is so much difference of opinion. It is true 
that there is much that will never be settled, 
that never was intended to be settled, especially 
as to dates, for then men would no longer be 



40 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



expectant. It is not intended that we should 
know exact details. For instance we may not 
speak dogmatically as to the ' ' time, times, and 
half time," or the 1290 days mentioned by the 
prophet Daniel. 

Although I have for thirty-five years studied 
the subject of prophecy, I feel to-day like a 
child who stands on the seashore looking out 
upon the vast expanse of waters, utterly unable 
to fathom the great depths of God's revelation. 
Like Canon Hore, the older I grow the more 
dogmatic I become on the great doctrines of 
man's salvation, and the less dogmatic as to the 
details of events of the future. I am only dog- 
matic upon the facts and the principles. 

Have you ever considered why the subject of 
prophecy should engage our attention ? Is there 
any intelligent being capable of carrying on 
Christian life without reference to prophecy ? 
Are not all of God's promises concerning our 
future really prophecies ? A man who calcu- 
lates with reference to the future is accounted a 
wise man ; so should a man be considered wise 
who studies the field of prophecy concerning the 
future, which should guide us as to the present. 
Moreover, if Christ is the center of my life, 
how can I abstain from the study of the pro- 
phetic utterances which pertain to his kingdom ? 
The world's future is wrapped up in prophecy, 
and only through this can we study the destiny 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 41 

of the kingdom, the Church, the world, or of 
ourselves. To refuse to study prophecy, there- 
fore, is to be wanting in the spiritual intelligence 
and hope of the Christian. 

The department of prophecy which we now 
take up relates especially to Christ, the Church, 
and the world. There are three general schools 
of thought with reference to the interpretation 
of the predictions relating to the second advent 
of our Lord — namely, the Pretorists, the His- 
toricists, and the Futurists. 

The Pretorists hold that all that was written 
by the Old and New Testament prophets was 
written from their own perview or immediate 
field of observation, and are prophetic only in so 
far as any keen-sighted politician might foresee 
coming events. Some even say that every word 
in Revelation was fulfilled before the end of 
Nero's reign. When on. one occasion in Eng- 
land I had made an address on this subject before 
a body of British divines, one brother who held 
the opposite view to myself arose and said that 
he had .made a careful study of this subject, and 
that more consummate foolishness he had never 
listened to in all his life; that anything more 
fatuous, foolish, and futile could not be imagined. 
After a few more similar compliments he added 
that there was not one single line in the whole 
apocalypse that was not fulfilled before the year 
100 A.D. I said somewhat under my breath, 



42 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



' ' What about the thousand years ? " He con- 
tinued, "I catch from Mr. Peploe's lips one of 
those foolish questions which only shows the 
ignorance of the questioner and with which they 
are accustomed to try to entrap us. I am fully 
prepared to answer the question — it is one so 
foolish, so inane that we simply pass it by as 
unworthy of notice. ' ' 

The Historicists say that all of Revelation, at 
least from chapter four to the end, has been ful- 
filled in detail, age after age, at various stages in 
the world's history. They say that we stand 
somewhere near the end of the final fulfillment. 
So they interpret the messages with regard to 
the seven churches, saying that these represent 
the condition of the church at successive periods 
in her history. 

The Futurists regard Revelation iv.-xxii. as a 
vision of the future ; to be fulfilled suddenly and 
absolutely at the time of Christ's appearing. 
The Old Testament predictions are taken to 
apply to the same period and they hold that 
as yet we have not entered upon any of the 
fulfillment. 

My own view is that all three schools have in 
them a measure of truth, and are intended by 
God to find a field for study in these prophecies. 
But none are sufficient, although I believe the 
Futurists to be nearer the truth. 

The great division on this subject is between the 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 43 



pre-millenarians and the post-millenarians . I 
have no sympathy with the views of the post-mil- 
lenarians, bnt am a strong believer in the pre-mil- 
lennial advent of our Lord. This view is that 
Christ will appear in the air, take to himself one 
class of his saints — it is not certain what the 
dividing line will be — and is then to reign on or 
over the earth;- it is not clear which, thongh 
probably over, since it wonld be difficult to local- 
ize Jesus in an earthly Jerusalem so that every 
eye might see him and worship him. I do not 
wish to speak dogmatically, for prophecy is an 
humbling study. I only wish to lead you to a 
closer study, to be less dogmatic as to details, 
and more positive as to events. At any rate 
Christ will come in the air and will call certain 
or all of his people to himself. 

In order clearly to understand these prophe- 
cies a knowledge of the Greek is very essential. 
Paul uses five or six different terms to express 
the expectant attitude of Christians towards the 
coming of Christ. In Titus ii. 13, it is Ttpos- 
dsKopiEroi, "looking for;" in Romans viii. 23, 
aneKdexopiai, "waiting for; " I. Thessalonians i. 
10, avej^eveiv, "to wait for," "expect." These 
various terms all involve the same general idea 
in different aspects — " reaching out and longing 
for, " " tarrying patiently till, " " waiting to re- 
ceive with soul upturned" — various altitudes 
all teaching us to be always ready and waiting. 



44 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Why is it said that Christ will come in the 
air f Paul writes to the Thessalonians in the 
first epistle that those who were alive at his 
coming should not go before those that were 
asleep, but that they were to be caught up 
together; therefore, they were to solace one 
another and to be stimulated to greater activity. 

In the air, but when? Do we look for Christ's 
coming for his saints before the great tribula- 
tion, or after ? Christ says (Luke xxi. 36), 
6 'Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that 
ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these 
things that shall come to pass, and to stand 
before the Son of man ; ' ' yet in another place he 
says (Matt. xxiv. 22): "Except those days be 
shortened, there should no flesh be saved; but 
for the elect's sake those days shall be short- 
ened." Will the elect then go through this 
tribulation which is to occur in the latter days ? 
If so, who then can escape it? The "elect" 
cannot here refer only to those on earth, nor can 
it refer to all the elect, for many of the elect 
have died. Then for whom of the elect will the 
days be shortened? Some of the elect must pass 
through the trial, and some will escape, I think. 

Let me suggest (only as a suggestion) that you 
study in this connection the parable of the ten 
virgins (Matt. xxv. 1-13) . The ten were all virgins 
and were waiting for the bridegroom, but only 
five of them had sufficient oil. The five wise 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 



45 



entered to the marriage feast while the five foolish 
were excluded. Does not this mean that all the ten 
were saints in one sense, and not that five were 
redeemed and five sinners, five saved and five 
eternally lost? I humbly believe that all 
were accepted in the Beloved. The five wise are 
described as comparatively ready (none were 
really ready) and had oil — meaning stores of grace, 
the power of the Holy Ghost. The other five had 
no oil except a little in their lamps and said, 
'•'Our lamps — not are gone out but — are going 
out." Our lamps never go out if we are the 
children of G-od. These foolish virgins were in 
peril of not being able to follow the bridegroom 
because of extinguished lights, therefore are bid- 
den to go and buy oil. Would the other five 
have refused them aid, and, in mocking contempt, 
have told them to go and buy for themselves, 
if they had been the children of the world and 
had been in danger of eternal exclusion from the 
kingdom ? ' • I never knew you ' ' is a marriage 
term, and here means that Christ could not 
accept them and receive them into the feast, 
but that they must be restored to grace by under- 
going tribulation. 

It seems to me that we might say of the 
church to-day, that one-half (I wish it were 
as large a i^roportion as that) are ready to go 
into the marriage feast of the Lamb, and that 
half, though among the elect, must pass through 



46 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



the tribulation of the latter days. For their 
sakes the days are to be shortened. The trial 
will come upon them at sore cost to their com- 
fort, but they will be accepted at last. The Lord 
comes and takes the ready and waiting part of 
the church into the marriage feast in the air, 
away from the world where they may learn to 
know each other — as a bridal couple to-day leave 
their parents and go into seclusion, that each 
may learn to know and trust the other. If 
then the Lord is to come, and lift his waiting 
church into the air before the great tribulation, 
we must look at the signs of the times to dis- 
cover whether or not our redemption draweth 
nigh — the redemption for which our Lord is 
waiting ; — so shall we be ever with the Lord. 

This view of the coming of our Lord enables 
me to believe that the dull, sleepy Christians 
who are members of the body of Christ as believ- 
ers, and who are yet grinding along without real 
hope and joy, and are not ready and waiting to 
go, are nevertheless not to be lost. The germ of 
truth is in them, and while "one shall be taken 
and the other left, ' ' it will be for trial and not 
for eternal destruction. Apparently they shall 
be in darkness without the presence of the Holy 
Spirit (their oil); but having been ripened by 
tribulation they shall become ready, and at the 
descent of our Lord, at the close of the feast, and 
the retirement into air (we can't say for how long, 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 47 

some say three and a half years), will be received 
by him when he shall come with all his saints, and 
shall stand on the Mount of Olives (Zech- 
ariah xiv. 5). Then comes the thousand years' 
reign, the millennium, when Christ will have his 
throne on or over the earth, and during which 
time the world will have the last opportunity to 
accept of Christ. 

Mankind has had in the past six thousand 
years many opportunities to turn to God ; there 
has been various dispensations of grace. Man 
was first tried in Eden surrounded by purity and 
in communion with Clod. He failed and fell. 
Then came the promises of God to redeem men 
before the flood ; then the covenant with Abra- 
ham ; then the law under Moses ; then God sent 
his Son Jesus Christ to die and to bring men the 
offer of salvation. All of these have failed to 
save the majority of mankind. There remains 
but one way for God to draw men (I say it rev- 
erently), and that is by a living, reigning, visible 
Christ over the earth, and Satan bound. Also 
when the Lord returns all Israel, as a nation, 
shall ' ' look on him whom they pierced ' ' and 
be saved; they shall lead the nations of the earth 
in seeking the Lord (Isaiah lv. and lvi., and 
Zechariah xiv.), and shall become such preach- 
ers of the Gospel as have never been known. 

In the thousand years comes mankind's last- 
opportunity. The earth will continue tohave 



48 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



seed time and harvest ; men will die (the child shall 
die at a hundred years) ; still some will reject 
Christ and die in their sins. At the end Satan 
wi]l be loosed for a season to see if men will 
turn away from serving God, or if they have 
become true subjects of the Lord (Revelation 
xx.). Then Satan prepares to fight with the 
world against God, but there is no battle. The 
fire of God consumes the Devil's host, and Satan 
himself is finally cast into the lake of fire. God 
now sets np his judgment seat, at which all the 
dead stand before God to be judged according to 
their works; nations are brought up for judg- 
ment ; those condemned to the second death are 
sent into everlasting fire. After this comes the 
voice from heaven, ' ' Behold, I make all things 
new" — not made anew, but renewed. The 
universe is purged by fire as in former days it 
had been purged by water, and the earth 
becomes the tabernacle of the Lord; the new 
Jerusalem descends out of heaven having ' ' the 
glory of the God " — a remarkable expression 
found nowhere else and signifying the perfection 
of God's glory. Then God becomes all and in all 
as Christ had been, who now gives up the king- 
dom to his Father. 

JSTow comes the trial of the saints according 
to their nse of the talents entrusted to them 
(Matthew xxv. 20-30). After this the Son of 
Man in his glory judges the nations of the 



THE SECOXD COMING OF OUR LORD. 49 

earth not according to their use of gifts, but 
according to their works. Remember that there 
are few, if any cases where, in judgment, much is 
made of sins committed, for they are purged 
away by the blood of Christ; men are judged 
because of what they have not done, not because 
of what they have done. Men are rejected not 
because of impotence. As a Christian said on 
his death bed, when asked by a friend who saw 
him weeping, if he was afraid to die, " Oh, no, I 
am not afraid, but I am so ashamed to die, for I 
have done so little for my Lord." What have 
you done for Him in return for what He has 
done for you ? How many of you could say with 
peaceful and rejoicing hearts, "Even so come 
Lord Jesus." 

Now, what are the reasons for thinking that 
the glorious event of Christ's coming may be 
near at hand? How about " wars and rumors of 
wars?" There are wars in many parts of the 
world, but it is especially noticeable that all 
Europe is arming herself seemingly preparing 
herself for a great battle. "Earthquakes in 
divers places. " I have no less an authority than 
Mr. Gladstone for saying that the earthquakes 
of the past two thousand years have been care- 
fully chronicled, and that in the last half cen- 
tury there have been more than during the pre- 
vious two thousand years. "Men's hearts 
failing them for fear." It is the opinion of 



50 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



the most prominent men of the day that never 
was there so much general anxiety as to what 
will be the ontcome of the present social and 
political conditions. There was never so critical 
a period in history. £ ' The Gospel shall be 
preached in all the world as a witness." This 
has certainly been fulfilled as never before in 
the history of the world. It can never be real- 
ized in its fullest sense seemingly, for, as has 
been frequently calculated, the natural growth 
of heathen populations is more rapid than their 
conversion. 

There seems to be, then, an agreement that 
the preliminary events have taken place as far 
as is necessary to a fulfillment of the predictions. 
All indicates that we are now about at a great 
crisis in the history of the world. 

In addition to this we read in Ezekiel xxxviii. 
and xxxix. that ' ' Gog, of the land of Magog, the 
prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal (which have 
been lately discovered in the Russian archives to 
be names for Russia, Moscow, and Tobalsk, and 
by which name the Czar is called) shall come out 
of the north and shall as a cloud cover the land " 
(of Israel). Genesis x. shows that Magog is a 
descendant of Japheth, and Revelation xx. con- 
nects Gog and Magog with the last days and 
destruction by the fire of God. It may not be 
generally known, but it is true, that Russia is 
now seeking to capture Palestine by estab- 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 51 

lishing throughout that country what are osten- 
sibly monasteries, but are in reality garrisons of 
armed soldiers, who are there with the purpose 
of rising at a moment's notice to capture the 
Holy City and forever exclude the hated Turk. 
This seems to point to a fulfillment of Ezekiel 
xxxviii. and xxxix., to be followed by what 
is • prophesied in Zechariah xiv., when there is 
foretold the siege of Jerusalem, and after it has 
been two-thirds taken the Lord descends upon 
the Mount of Olives and there follows the battle 
of Armegeddon. Palestine is cleared of its 
enemies; Israel becomes God's servants, and the 
millennial reign begins. 

We seem, then, to be at a crisis in history. I 
can see no great reason why we should not live to 
see the Lord come. Oh, blessed moment; oh, 
glorious privilege ! ' ' Seeing we look for such 
things, what manner of men ought we to be? " 
Oh, noblest privilege that I might be the man to 
bring the last soul to complete the body of 
Christ! And the instant that living stone is 
brought into place and the whole completed, we 
shall hear the shout, ' £ Grace, grace, ' ' and the 
Lord will come. Are you ready? Are you liv- 
ing, looking forward, hastening unto the day of 
the Lord? 



WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED. 



But the voice answered me again from heaven, What God hath 
cleansed, call not thou common. — Acts xi. 9. 

What voice it was that gave utterance to these 
words, we are not told either in the tenth chap- 
ter when the vision is first recorded, or in the 
eleventh chapter, where Peter describes it to 
those of the circumcision in Judea. But Peter 
in both places describes himself as saying, c ' Not 
so, Lord, ' ' thus seeming to recognize the voice of 
Jesus, with whom he had been so long and inti- 
mately associated a few years before, and whose 
will he was now seeking to carry out. 

What a beautiful instance we have here of the 
Saviour speaking from heaven. Therefore it has 
peculiar force. In the first place it testifies as to 
what Jesus had done : ' 'what God hath cleansed;" 
and in the second place speaks to those whom he 
has cleansed and says, that from the time of 
their cleansing nothing can henceforth make 
them common or unclean. Jesus, who had per- 
formed the wonderful act of cleansing, is the one 



WHAT GOB HATH CLEANSED. 53 



most qualified to speak from heaven and to say 
this. Peter therefore says that God had showed 
him this blessed truth, that all may be saved 
because all are cleansed. 

There is a dispensational truth in this utter- 
ance by Christ. It is a beautiful truth that God 
no longer distinguishes between Israel and the 
Gentiles, and now for the first time Peter, the 
one who had always been of the most strict and 
exclusive of the Hebrews, was instructed in the 
universal character of the Gospel. Therefore 
Peter no longer hesitated when he knew that it 
was God's will that all men should be saved. He 
was a humble learner at Jesus' feet. It is a 
wonderful lesson for all men to learn. ISTot every 
man can break down the walls of prejudice 
which have all his lifetime been hedging him 
about. Peter had never dreamed that God was 
willing to let every man come unto the king- 
dom, so he had to have his eyes opened. 

It is a triumph of grace to accept new truth 
and to live by it. God taught Peter that now 
all the barriers were broken down, and men were 
to know that salvation was for all ; it was to be 
preached to men on earth and in heaven, and in 
hades — if that is what Peter means in his first 
epistle when he says that Jesus went to preach 
to the spirits under guard. Whole nations were 
to see that God's love was bestowed for them. 
This is a reproach to us, in reminding us how little 



54 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



we have done to fulfill the last command of 
Christ. 

But there is a deeper truth here. Let us first 
consider the thought of the vessel let down from 
heaven. In it were all kinds of beasts of the 
earth, and creeping things, and four-footed 
beasts, and fowls of the air. It seems to be a 
general summary intended to represent the whole 
creation, and is symbolical of man in his totality 
as divided into nations, into families, into house- 
holds, and also as symbolizing each individual 
considered in the many departments and char- 
acteristics of his being. Look at it. You see 
there a mass of living animals of all kinds and 
descriptions. The sheet is full of striking dis- 
tinctions and great contrasts. There is the 
proud eagle and the crawling worm, the mighty 
elephant and the loathsome toad. All kinds, 
from the highest to the lowest are here in one 
sheet, struggling and striving for the mastery. 
They are all thus brought together for a purpose. 
What a picture of mankind; and of man's own 
individual nature ! Men differ from each other 
remarkably and yet all are bound together with- 
out distinction, in one sheet for the purpose of 
God. Each man has also within him different 
instincts, qualities and aspirations ; at one time 
we have the highest aspirations, and at another 
we are fit to be the companions of the devil. 
There are some noble and some degrading pas- 



WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED. 



55 



sions all present in one man, and all men in one 
sheet. Therefore all kinds of men are to receive 
the blessing of the Gospel. 

Notice also that the sheet is tied, literally 
"knit together," at the fonr corners. These 
men are massed together so as not to escape from 
contact with their fellows. Of course, the most 
powerful rise to the top just as they do in the 
world. Imagine the struggle for life in that 
sheet tied at the four corners ! It is God's 
picture of man and humanity. They are brought 
together to show that all are in one place and in 
one condition. The four corners to stand for the 
four quarters of the globe — this sheet includes 
the whole world. 

What is the purpose of thus bringing together 
all these nations, these congregations, these house- 
holds, these individual men into one sheet? It 
is that they may learn to know God and to 
realize their own impotence and degradation; 
that they may know that all are equal in the 
sight of God. There is no dilference, all have 
sinned and come short — the highest as well as 
the lowest, as Paul says in Romans : There is 
no ground for separation ; all are massed in 
together in a hopeless condition, and their 
mouths are stopped. God has shut them up in 
their unbelief and there is no escape — all are in 
one condition, in one position — all are dead. 
This applies to the most sanctified and to the most 



56 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



depraved who are trusting in their own efforts. 
Some are noble and some are degraded, but all 
are shut up to judgment. This is humanity in 
its natural state. 

What then is the purpose of God in thus shut- 
ting them up? After the vision of man and 
nature comes the revelation of God's work of 
grace. The voice says to Peter : ' ' What God 
hath cleansed" — those whom he has pardoned, 
whom he has elected, whom he has selected. 
We know nothing of a universalism taught by 
the Word of God. There is a mass of mankind 
who reject Christ that will have to suffer; but 
what is clearly revealed here is that all humanity 
is represented in that vessel, and all mankind, 
nationally and individually, is shut up in a help- 
less condition. Then the words, "What God 
hath cleansed " must have their full force. They 
mean the whole contents of the sheet. It is all 
cleansed. God hath cleansed the whole human 
race. And men still perish? Yes. 

After God had created the earth and the 
heavens and had put man into the garden of 
Eden, He pronounced himself satisfied. He saw 
that it was all very good. But Satan entered 
the garden and from that time humanity was 
separated from God. Separation involves death 
and brings ruin and corruption. This condition 
of things would have proceeded indefinitely and 
all mankind would have perished had it not 



WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED. 



57 



been far the mercy of God. If in one man's fall 
all the human race was corrupted, ruined and 
lost, if by one man death came upon all, is there 
not ground for the skeptic's charge that God is 
responsible for sin in us? As one man said to 
me, "If I'm sinful, God made me and he's 
responsible for it, not I. Why didn't he make 
me holy if he wanted me to be holy?" Because 
man was ruined shall God be accused of injust- 
ice? God must not only be the justifier of men, 
he must be just as well. Man has sinned and 
shall God be therefore unjust, must he not make 
a satisfaction for his broken law as well as pro- 
vide a way of deliverance from sin ? 

Therefore it was necessary that God should 
make, in the sacrifice of his own Son, a provision 
equal to the need, and prevailing over it. Paul 
teaches this in Romans v. The five "much 
mores ' ' in that chapter show that God was equal 
to the occasion and, in Jesus Christ, made for 
man's justification a provision absolute, perfect 
and everlasting. Thus the words to Peter were 
justifiable. The Greek indicates a single act of 
cleansing — once and for all. If in Adam's fall 
and ruin all were included, in Christ must not 
all also be included? In Christ all died (II. 
Corinthians, v. 14), therefore the debt is paid. 

Justification can now take place and the law be 
satisfied and God justified. "As in Adam all 
died, so in Christ shall all be made alive." But 



58 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



the provision of inclusion is not mere satisfaction 
of the law. In one sense all are alive if they will 
only accept the provision made for them. How 
then can man perish ? If all are cleansed what 
need is there of the Gospel? Just at this point 
notice that Peter is taught to go and preach to 
the Gentiles. He is told to go not to a heathen 
outcast, but to a man just and holy before God 
as far as his knowledge went. Yet to him, the 
Gospel of the remission of sins in the name of 
Jesus must be preached, as well as to the vilest 
outcast. 

There is an awful responsibility in the Gospel. 
It damns a man if he will not accept it. God 
makes provision for a free pardon, but what if 
you decline to take it. Here it is — God holds it 
out to you — take it — if you do not there are 
awful consequences and the fault is yours, not 
God's. If you turn your back on God you set 
your face toward the devil. If the Gospel needed 
to.be preached to Cornelius, then a man's own 
righteousness will not save him ; Cornelius must 
close with God's bargain. He must take God's 
gift; that was all he had to do and all was 
right. 

About eighteen years ago, shortly after I had 
gone to London, I was called upon to visit a 
dying man who had been told that he was at the 
gates of death. His wife, who was one of those 
emotional Christians who always make a great 



WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED. 



59 



deal of feeling saved, met me at the door and 
said to me before I went in that her husband 
had been an infidel for many years, and that she 
was afraid he would not receive anything from 
my lips. She hoped that he would not be rude to 
me, but he was a confirmed unbeliever and 
scoffer. I asked her not to detain me then, but 
to let me go to his bedside. 

I went into the room and found him to be a 
great, powerfully built man of about fifty-six 
years of age. I spoke a few words to him and 

he said, " Oh, you're one of those parsons, 

are you ? Well, I want to tell you I don't take 
any stock in you. You expect me to feel saved 
just because you say I should, but you won't 
get me to do it." I replied, " On the contrary, 
I should be very sorry if you did feel saved, for 
very probably you would feel damned to-morrow 
when you were in some extra pain or anguish of 
body." "What," he said, "do you mean to 
say that you don't want me to feel saved?" 
"No," I answered, "I don't. Your feelings 
will not alter facts, and it is the facts that I 
want you to see. It is a fact that God sent His 
Son Jesus Christ into the world to die for you, 
and because of this God the Father offers you 
free salvation from the bondage of sin and 
death." "Augh," he exclaimed, "I don't 
understand all that rot." "Well, I will try to 
put it more simply. Remember that facts are 



60 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



facts, and that it is a fact that the Son of God 
has literally taken your place and paid the pen- 
alty for your sins ; He has died for yon, and so 
has opened to you the door of heaven that you 
may freely enter. He has sent me with the 
document which contains your freedom signed 
with the blood of Jesus, and I simply ask, will 
you accept it?" "I don't understand what 
you're driving at," said he. "Let me put it 
to you still more plainly then," I answered. 

' ' Suppose that you have committed some 
crime and you are in prison, and the queen, 
because the Prince of Wales has satisfied the 
law for you prisoners, sends a pardon to each 
one of you in prison, and says that if you will 
accept it you can go out free ; and that if you 
will come to her palace she will give you a home. 
Suppose that there are ten men in ten cells, and 
the messenger comes to the first man and shows 
him the pardon. He says, ' I don't believe the 
queen ever wrote that pardon ; it is no more 
good than just so much waste paper.' The sec- 
ond man says, ' I liate the queen and wouldn't 
accept a pardon from her on any account, ' and 
he tears up the paper. The third man says, £ I 
don't want a pardon, I am contented where I 
am. I won't take my liberty.' A fourth says, 
' Ah, I have been here a long time ; this is too 
good to be true, ' and he refuses. The fifth man 
looks at it and exclaims, ' My God, is this for 



WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED. 



61 



me ! ' He grasps it and jumps up and exclaims, 
' Jailer, let me out. ' He presents it to the 
warden who examines the paper, says ' It is all 
right,' opens the door and lets him out a free 
man. He goes to the queen and thanks her, 
anti she takes him into her royal home. 

"Now all these men were pardoned, that was 
the fact and it did not alter the fact whether 
they believed it, or felt pardoned, or refused it, 
or not. But suppose that the queen in pardon- 
ing them had ordered that the prison should be 
burned to the ground on the morrow, as a pest 
to the neighborhood, and had proclaimed that all 
who remain in it must perish with it. Whose 
fault will it be if I refuse the pardon and remain 
there in spite of the edict?" " Why, yours, you 
fool, ' ' said he. " Quite right, ' ' I replied, £ 4 only 
you are the fool this time and not I." Now, it 
is a fact that God has sent me as his messenger 
to tell you that his Son Jesus Christ has paid 
the penalty for your sins and has opened the 
door into heaven for you. All you have to do is 
to take the pardon, walk into the kingdom, and 
become God's heir." " Why, you don't mean 
to say that it is a fact that God's Son died for 
me?" (And this was the man who an hour 
before had been a confirmed skeptic!) "Yes," I 
said, "that is the fact. He died for you." 
" Can it be true? " he said ; "that is a rum say- 
ing. Go over it again." I went over it 



62 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



again. ' ' Do you really mean to say that is 
true? Tell me it again. I am fifty-six years 
old, and to this day no man ever told me this 
before. Do you really mean that God did that 
for me? Go over it again, won't you?" I 
told him the story again and when I left him 
there was a more peaceful look on his face, and 
the next day when I called to see him, he said 
' ' Go back over those facts you told me bef ore ? 
won't you? They have been sticking in my 
gizzard ever since." 

About six weeks later he was sinking rapidly, 
and they called me to see him. He seemed to 
be going and his wife rushed up to him and put- 
ting her arm around him cried, " John, do tell 
me that you feel saved, before you go." He 
straightened himself up a little, and resting upon 
one arm said slowly and with difficulty, ' ' Wife - 
feelings - make - no - difference. — Feelings -don't 
alter -facts. — It - is - a - fact - that - God's - Son- 
died - for - me - and - opened - the - door - that - 
I - might - go - into - heaven . — I- die - resting - on 
that -fact." And he fell back and was gone. 

My friends, the Gospel message comes to all ; 
there is not a sinner who may not be saved this 
moment, for salvation is a finished work and it 
is free to you if you will accept it. It is for all ; 
the kingdom is opened alike for Gentiles and 
for believers; to the just and pure and to the 
vile and outcast. Salvation is an accomplished 
work. Accept it. 



WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED. 



63 



1. This truth does away with sectarianism. 
You may think you are an eagle and that other 
sects are the poor crawling worms. All are 
equal — there is no difference. You may have 
climbed up to the top of the sheet, but you can 
never get out by yourself. If you begin to glory 
in yourself, you are done for. Your only salva- 
tion is in God's cleansing. 

2. We learn that our duty is to all nations and 
peoples and languages. Therefore, go and tell 
them the story of the Cross. 

3. Never despair of any man. Seek him out 
to save him, even though he be as the vilest rep- 
tile. Go and die for him if necessary. 

4. There is also a lesson for the careless, the 
cold and the unconverted. " What God hath 
cleansed." Have you ever thought, when you 
were giving way to some vile passion or unholy 
desire, that God had cleansed you. What right 
have you to defile — to treat as a common thing, 
to pollute — the body of humiliation which God 
hath cleansed. Never call it common ; never use 
it for anything low ; never use your tongue to 
speak vile, unholy things ; never use your eyes 
to look on impure sights ; never use your hands 
to perform unrighteous acts. If you do, what 
must be the awful consequences ! In Hebrews x. 
28, 29 we read: "He that despised Moses' Law 
died without mercy under two or three witnesses. 
Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall 



64 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



he be thought worthy who hath trodden under 
foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of 
the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an un- 
holy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit 
of grace?" All have been sanctified — cleansed 
by God. If you neglect to keep clean what can 
become of you ? You who want to sow your wild 
oats — God has cleansed your being. If you now 
count it common what can become of you? 

5. Christians, God hath cleansed you, should 
you then be groaning under the bondage of some 
sin? Recognize the fact that God hath cleansed 
you ; therefore, never again be in bondage to sin 
as the children of Israel were in Egypt ; never be 
wandering in the wilderness, but take your place 
in the high places ; live in the King's court in the 
very presence of God. Never make common what 
God hath cleansed. Of the new Jerusalem we 
read (Revelation xxi. 27), ' ' There shall in no wise 
enter into it anything that defileth — the same 
word, maketh common — neither whatsoever 
worketh abomination or maketh a lie." If I am 
common I cannot enter into the holy city. 

Again, never call any man or woman com- 
mon ; no prostitute, or murderer, or miser, how- 
ever low or degraded. Each one is cleansed by 
the blood of Christ, only he does not know it. Go 
tell him that he is cleansed ; preach to him the 
Word that maketh clean. 

God hath justified himself. He has provided 



WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED. 



65 



salvation from the penalty, and from the very 
presence and power of sin. Will you stand out 
on this blessed truth and keep clean by the grace 
of God that which he hath cleansed by the blood 
of Christ? 



THE PREPARED MESSENGER. 



Thus Ezekiel is unto you a sign ; according to all that he hath 
done, shall ye do ; and when this cometh ye shall know that I am 
the Lord God. — Ez. xxiv. 24- 

Ezekiel is here denoted a sign or type of the 
servant of God — one whose delight is to make 
known the riches of God's love. You will never 
obtain a crown as a messenger of the Lord of 
hosts, until you become a holy servant of God 
like the prophet Ezekiel. 

The people are described in this book as 
having received the favor of God, being chosen 
as the medium of his blessing. God allowed 
the ten tribes to sever themselves from the 
two, because of the iniquity of Rehoboam, 
and could not use them as his witnesses and 
servants. 

There could not be found in all Israel a man 
wholly given up to God ; a man who was sancti- 
fied entirely to God's service. To this day the 
ten tribes are scattered and unknown because 
they despised the voice of God. But they have 
not been punished as severely as the other two 
tribes, because they did not crucify God's Son. 



THE PREPARED MESSENGER. 



(37 



Though. God spared them, and offered them 
mercy, they rejected his offer. 

One hundred and thirty -three years after 
Israel was taken captive into Assyria, Judah and 
Benjamin were carried into Babylon. There the 
Lord raised up this man Ezekiel to be his mes- 
senger to the captive people. 

Why does the Lord select one man from the 
nation or parish, and give him a special blessing? 
It is that he may go back to his parish and 
become a witness for the Lord of hosts. We are 
called of God to be his witness wherever we go. 
The nations around us, like Israel and Judah, 
refuse to take the blessing of the Lord. The 
people of England and of America have likewise 
refused to live in the full light of the Lord. We 
are called to go to those who have refused God's 
blessing, and are now in caxDtivity. Our own 
family, our own nation are living in bondage, 
and to them God would send us. 

Ezekiel is the only man to whom the title 
" Son of man" is given as it is given to the Son 
of God.* We find it applied to Ezekiel the same 
number of times (89) that it is used with reference 
to our Lord in the Gospel according to St. John. 
Therefore we conclude that the name " Son of 
man" is used for a special purpose here. The 
title Son of man is given to Jesus Christ to show 



* Once you will find it in Daniel vii. 13, referring to the Messiah. 



68 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



that God has called Jesus Christ to be his wit- 
ness. He can thus take any man to be his 
witness, who will hear and obey his voice. 
' ' Thus saith the Lord God ' ' is repeated over 
two hundred times in this book. It is the 
special voice of God to Ezekiel. The Lord pre- 
pares his servants to-day exactly as he prepared 
Ezekiel. 

* ' The word of the Lord came expressly unto 
Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land 
of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar ; and the 
hand of the Lord was there upon him ' ' (Ezekiel 
i. 3). These are the first two steps in God's 
preparations of his messengers : First, the 
Word ; then, the hand of the Lord put upon man 
to make him feel that he is a chosen vessel unto 
the Lord. 

Third, there must be the revelation of the 
glory of God. ' ' As the appearance of the bow 
that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was 
the appearance of the brightness round about. 
This was the appearance of the likeness of the 
glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on 
my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake ' ' 
(Ezekiel i. 28). 

Has the glory of God appeared to you as it did 
to Ezekiel? It appeared to Paul, to Peter, and 
to John, and every one in the Old and in the 
New Testament to whom it came fell upon their 
faces before it as dead men. 



THE PREPARED MESSENGER. 



69 



Then came the Spirit and entered unto him 
(Ezekiel ii. 2), and next the command beginning 
with, "Thus saith the Lord God." The com- 
mand is " Go speak to the house of Israel " (iii. 
1), and then follows the message which he is to 
carry to them. 

The word, the hand, the glory, the Spirit, the 
command of the Lord compelled him to go ; he 
could not stay. How many of us have felt that 
we must go and give a message — fearing to 
refuse, saying, I cannot escape. The Lord must 
have a man of fixed purpose. But after he has 
given the fivefold call, if you still go unwill- 
ingly and in bitterness of sj)irit, the Lord will 
not anoint you with power. 

But a man must abide God's time to speak. 
4 'When I speak with thee, I will open thy 
mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, thus saith 
the Lord God; he that heareth, let him hear; 
and he that f orbeareth, let him forbear ; for they 
are a rebellious house ' ' (iii. 27). God would not 
open Ezekiel' s mouth at first (iii. 26), because 
Ezekiel was not ready, and you will have no 
power until the Lord opens your mouth. 

Men and women go to a convention and talk 
about the blessing that they have received ; they 
shake the speaker's hand and say that they have 
" enjoyed it so much." My friends, the en- 
trance into God's blessed promises is not a 
thing to enjoy immediately. For many days 



70 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



you may not enjoy it, for there are battles to 
fight and the flesh to be mortified before yon are 
ready for the peaceful enjoyment of the blessing. 

Now God says to Ezekiel (chapter iv.), "I 
want you to get ready and show the people a 
picture of the City of Peace being taken by the 
heathen." Ezekiel was told to lie down upon 
his left side for three hundred and ninety days, 
according to the number of days that he was to 
bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. Then 
he was afterwards to lie for forty days upon 
his right side in bearing the iniquity of Judah. 
You must give up all yonr earthly business, all 
your work ; yon must be separated from your 
home — yon will be called a fool for lying upon 
your side for a year and a quarter — until you 
feel the curse that has come npon your land, 
and until you feel the sin of the people of Eng- 
land and America. 

But that is not enough. The Lord tells him 
to defile his priesthood by eating defiled bread. 
Poor Ezekiel cries out, " Oh, my Lord! I have 
never been polluted, do not make me filthy in 
the eyes of man" (Ezekiel iv. 14). God said, 
" You must do it" — and we too must obey the 
word of the Lord no matter what it costs us. 

God says furthermore, ' c Dig thou through the 
wall in their sight, and carry out thereby " 
(xii. 5). You must remove from the rebellious 
house. Everybody will stop and look at the 



THE PREPARED MESSENGER. 



71 



man who is tearing Ms house down, and carry- 
ing everything out. Men will wonder and per- 
haps scoff, but yon must do it. If yon are 
willing to give up your home, and your precious 
ornaments to be kicked about or carried off by 
the men of the world, God will use you. I can- 
not say what God will tell you to do, but what 
he commands must be done. 

Some time ago at Keswick, when I was speak- 
ing on this subject and was saying that a conse- 
crated man, like Ezekiel, must be ready to give 
up his business, his priesthood, his home, pos- 
sibly even his wife before he could receive a 
blessing — suddenly a man arose in the audience 
and bursting into tears said, " Mr. Peploe, don't 
— don't — don't ! Is God going to ask that of 
me? It seems too much." The man was Bishop 
Hill, afterwards the first bishop sent to Africa. 
It was a most solemn scene to see that young 
man in full strength of body, standing there, 
weeping at the thought of giving up one dearer 
to him than life. I said, r,i Brother, I cannot say 
what God may do. But may you be ready 
when he calls. ? ' 

This man died a short time ago, and Miss 
Maxwell, one of the missionaries who labored 
near him in Africa, but knew nothing of what 
had happened at Keswick, recently told me the 
striking event of his death. She said that 
Bishop Hill preached at her parish one Sunday, 



72 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



and seemed inspired by God throughout the 
service. He spoke on Ezekiel, and showed how 
God may require us to give up one thing and 
then another, in order that we may be brought 
nearer to Him. At last he said, " You may even 
be called upon to give up the dearest one on 
earth to you." 4 'It seemed wonderful," Miss 
Maxwell said, "he was speaking out of his 
whole heart. He said, 'Brethren, do you not 
think that God will give you grace to part with 
the desire of your eyes, and that you will not 
sigh with pain ? ' 

"After service he was talking with some 
friends and just then his wife came in, and he 
said, 'Darling, sister has been asking me if I 
could part with the desire of my heart, and not 
grieve with bitter pain. ' She said, ' What did 
you say, dear?' He replied, 'I have been six 
months getting ready to say it; thank God, I 
can say it now. I can part even with you.' " It 
took him six months to get ready to be a sign. 

" He was seized with fever on Monday, and on 
Thursday he died. The wife who had been 
taken ill previously, died first, and then he died 
very soon after; neither knew of the other's 
death." 

Be consecrated to God now. He can never 
show you his glory until you are. The Lord is 
better than our faith. The Lord knows what is 
good for us. If he calls any of us to be an 



THE PREPARED MESSENGER 



73 



Ezekiel. lie will prepare us and give n? strength 
for it. God has to call yon, as he called Ezekiel, 
before he can reveal his glory, and before yon 
can show to others the glory and riches of God.* 

The glory of the Lord cannot stay in the house 
of man because of sin. God wants a consecrated 
temple, a consecrated people. He is ready to 
consecrate yon. but it will cost yon something. 
Are yon ready for any sacrifice? 

'"Our light affliction, which is bnt for a 
moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory ; while we look not 
at the things which are seen, but at the things 
which are not seen : for the things which are 
seen are temporal ; bnt the things which are not 
seen are eternal. ,? 

'•"Wlio is willing in the day of his power? " 

May the Lord help yon to say : " Here am I. 
Lord, take me. consecrate me. use me. send me 
as thy messenger wherever thou wilt." 



* The notes of address are imperfect here, but 3Jr. Peploe called attention 
to the fruitful field for thought in the study and comparison with each other 
of viii. 4 : ix. 3 ; xi. 22. 23 ; and xliii. 2. 4. The glory of the Lord went up 
from the city and stood over Olivet, never again to he seen until the rebuilding 
of the temple. D. L, P. 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



From this day will I bless you. — Haggai ii. 19. 

We are not ignorant, says the Apostle Paul, of 
the devices of Satan ; and it is well for those 
who can say as confidently as the Apostle that 
they are not ignorant of the many tricks and 
schemes by which Satan is trying to prevent 
God's people from being blessed, and the world 
from being saved. It has been well said that 
where Satan cannot destroy, he seeks to dis- 
hearten; where Satan cannot condemn, he 
seeks to separate. That may be why the 
Holy Ghost inspired Paul in the eighth of 
Romans to tell us that while we begin with no 
condemnation we complete our blessedness with 
no separation. 

You may have experienced heartrending dis- 
tress at the thought that you might have lived 
so much brighter and better and more beautiful 
lives, and that you might have glorified God 
so much more, if from the very beginning of 
your spiritual life you had faithfully utilized 
the goodness of God to his glory. It is quite 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 75 

possible that after having reviewed the goodness 
of God, and their own past failures and follies, 
many will say, " It is practically useless for me 
to try; habits are so confirmed, efforts have 
been so futile, failures have been so many that 
I see no use whatever in expecting anything 
better." 

AYTiere the devil cannot rob us of our salva- 
tion he often easily robs us of our expectation. 
Your ability to exhibit better, brighter, more 
powerful and more beautiful lives in future than 
you dreamed possible in the past, depends upon 
your conception of God. If we could only com- 
prehend God we should live a perfect life, 
because "this is life eternal, that they may 
know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
whom thou hast sent." It is for want of knowl- 
edge of God that our lives are such failures.* 

Look at the magnificence of God in his love, 
his patience, his tenderness and his forbearance, 
and then say whether you are waiting for better 
and brighter things and wondering how it is 
possible for you to live a life of blessedness, a life 
of power, a life of peace. 

*In Hosea, that ■wonderful book of reTelation to men's souls, the Holy Ghost 
by the prophet shows two great things: first, that sin lay in the want of 
knowledge and in the refusal of knowledge; and, secondly, that, nevertheless, 
God was perpetually saying to his people, " Turn and return." The key words 
to the prophecy of Hosea are knowledge and know, and turn and return, as much 
as to say You have despised the one thing that makes eternal life, you have re- 
jected the Lord and played the whore, whereas you should have been to him a 
pure and holy wife; yet return, says the Lord, and understand the blessed 
truth of what God is. 



70 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Before I take up the wonderful passage before 
us, I want to introduce it by a few thoughts from 
the prophets, and from two or three of the histor- 
ical books which show how God is ever ready to 
give a blessing notwithstanding the utter deprav- 
ity of man. 

The Lord Jesus Christ was not revealed from 
heaven until men had come to utter ruin. It 
was the same in the days of Noah, and in the 
days of Moses when the people had sunk until 
there was not a family on the face of the earth 
that really belonged to God. God then took one 
man, Moses, and drew him out from the place of 
destruction, and manifested his grace unto him, 
so that through this one man whom God forced 
to be faithful, a whole nation could be saved 
and brought out into absolute liberty and bless- 
ing. Faithful souls may be made to see that 
the Lord can be merciful to a people sunk into 
utter depravity, who knew no better ; but when 
the revelation of God has been made to them, 
• then they were brought out into light and lib- 
erty, and did not fall back. Perhaps you 
have heard of the keeping power of Christ, and 
still have wandered away from him, so that now 
you are ashamed to look up into the face of God. 
That is exactly the position I would ask you to 
occupy. 

In an after-meeting in my own church in Lon- 
don, I was once endeavoring to show a man that 



THE WAY OF BLESSIXG. 



77 



there was mercy for the vilest. The man said, 
' ' I have been a backslider ; I have wandered 
away from my Lord until I am absolutely with- 
out hope." I said, "God comes to the back- 
slider, and there is hope for him." I turned to 
the book of Micah where God says that he will 
sink man's sins into the very depths of the sea, 
and I said, ' ' You are probably aware that even 
a cannon ball will not sink beyond a certain 
depth in the ocean, and yet God says that your 
sins shall go lower than a cannon ball and can- 
not come up again." See how the devil will 
dishearten a soul! The man turned upon me 
with a look of anguish and said, " Oh, my God, 
you don't mean to say that a cannon ball will 
not sink, and that my sins will go below a 
cannon ball ! God have mercy upon me ! How 
awfully heavy my sins must be; there is no 
chance for me whatever! " 

" Resist the devil and he will flee from you." 
Resist him when he comes with subtle doubts, 
with difficult questions, with hard and bitter 
things against you, drive him back by the sword 
of the Spirit and the shield of Faith ; quench all 
his fiery darts, and listen to the voice of God. 
What does God say concerning the people who 
have been brought out from captivity, and have 
been placed in a position of liberty, joy, and 
peace with God, and yet have stiffened their 
necks and hardened their hearts against him? 



78 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Have you noticed the turning point in the reve- 
lation of God in the book of Isaiah ? Up to the 
thirty -ninth chapter, the Spirit is trying to con- 
vince men of sin, of the destruction that awaits 
the sinner if he continues in his sin, of the gen- 
eral provisions of God for salvation, of the final 
judgments of God on the earth, and of God's 
general provision of perfect salvation and glory 
hereafter. But suddenly when Hesekiah, the 
king, has refused the goodness of God, who has 
brought him out of his mortal sin and given him 
assurance of riches and comfort, and has become 
boastful and haughty and wicked again, the 
prophecy changes in character and God merci- 
fully says : ' ' Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, 
cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that 
her iniquity is pardoned ; for she hath received 
of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Let 
the voice cry, ' Prepare the way of the Lord ! ' " 
For what is he coming? To take the poor little 
lambs into his bosom, to make the earth that was 
barren bring forth an hundred-fold, to make the 
young men rise up with wings as eagles. Is that 
consistent with the first chapter of Isaiah? Your 
high critic with all his learning, I am sorry to 
think, does not know the blessed God. It is 
exactly what God might be expected to do — to 
turn to the depraved, the lost and the proud, 
and to say, c ' I still forgive, I still enable, I still 
bring a blessing. Hearken to me, thou worm of 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



79 



Jacob ; with thee, tliou worm, will I thresh the 
mountains. 1 ' That is exactly like our God, is it 
not? And yet you have felt yourselves such 
outcasts that you thought there was no hope for 
you with regard to this holy life. 

Take another instance. Just before the 
destruction of Jerusalem about 590 (150 years 
later than Isaiah >, when the last days of Jerusalem 
are coming, everything is sinking into the very 
dregs of humiliation, and it would seem that 
there is no hope for the people of God. The 
ten tribes have been scattered, and now the utter 
destruction of Jerusalem is at hand, and yet, 
although they have sinned against the Lord to an 
awful extent, so that the prophet Jeremiah has 
to say, " Shame hath devoured the labor of our 
fathers from our youth ; their nocks and their 
herds ; their sons and their daughters. TTe lie 
down in our shame, and our confusion covereth 
us ; for we have sinned against the Lord our God, 
we and our fathers, from our youth even unto 
this day. and have not obeyed the voice of the 
Lord our God'" (Jeremiah iii. 24, 25). From 
chapter three to chapter thirty-two it is the 
same story all the way through, until at last we 
read in the thirty-second chapter and thirtieth 
verse, ''The children of Israel and the children 
of Judah have only done evil before me from 
their youth ; for the children of Israel have only 
provoked me to anger with the work of their 



80 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



hands, saitli the Lord." The next few verses 
tell us what they had done. Then notice verse 
thirty-six. " Now therefore, " — one of the most 
amazing theref ores to be f onnd in the whole Bible 
— " And now therefore, thus saith the Lord, the 
God of Israel, concerning this city, whereof ye 
say, It shall be delivered into the hand of the 
king of Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, 
and by the pestilence." Then to the end of the 
next chapter we have a series of "I wills ' ' 
betokening the unsearchable riches of God, and 
his love and goodness towards his people. 

Let us take a stage further than the time of Jer- 
emiah. Within two or three years of his utter- 
ing those words Jerusalem was overthrown 
(in 588 B. C), and the people were carried away 
into Babylon where they had to endure seventy 
years of captivity. Now at the end of the cap- 
tivity (though the seventy years were not ful- 
filled entirely), when the time came that Cyrus 
was about to come to the throne, we read (II. 
Chron. xxxvi. 22): "Now, in the first year of 
Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord 
spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be 
accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of 
Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclama- 
tion throughout all his kingdom and put it also 
in writing, saying, ' Thus saith Cyrus king of 
Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth hath the 
Lord God of Heaven given me; and he hath 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



81 



charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, 
which is in Judah. Who is there among you of 
all his people? The Lord his God be with him, 
and let him go up.' " 

I am drawing toward solemn deductions from 
these facts. The opening of the book of Ezra is 
a repetition of these words which are there fol- 
lowed by a call for the people who are willing to 
go, and under Zerubbabel six thousand people 
return to Jerusalem. This edict would seem to 
have been passed in about 536 B. C. These men 
come back to Jerusalem. They are the beloved, 
the elect like you and me, who, having once re- 
ceived the favor of God, have fallen into god- 
lessness and carelessness, and selfishness and 
depravity, and have as a chastisement been 
allowed to come into bondage, burden bearing, 
and distress. We feel we are in captivity and 
are not enjoying the covenant privileges of God 
as we might, and yet we believe that we are his 
covenant people. Now, God gives the edict that 
sets us free, and we are brought back out of cap- 
tivity into a position of privilege. We are in 
Jerusalem. And yet it may be that, like the 
beloved few who returned to Jerusalem at last, 
you wander over the ruins of your own past his- 
tory saying, " Oh, my God, there is no hope for 
me, I cannot be better. I have sought to over- 
come that temper, that restfulness, that worldli- 
ness, that selfishness to which I have been in 



82 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



bondage, but I cannot. Only last night I made 
confession to God and consecrated myself to him. 
And yet already I have fallen back again ; I am 
in a city of desolation instead of prosperity." 

Mnety years after the time of Cyrus's edict, 
Ezra says: " Oh, my God, I am ashamed, and 
blush to lift up my face to thee, my God ; for 
our iniquities are increased over our head, and 
our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. 
Since the days of our fathers have we been in a 
great trespass unto this day ; and for our iniqui- 
ties have we, our kings and our priests, been 
delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, 
to the sword, to captivity, and to a spoil, and to 
confusion of face, as it is this day. And now for 
a little space grace hath been showed from the 
Lord our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, 
and to give us a nail in his holy place, that our 
God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little 
reviving in our bondage. For we were bondmen ; 
yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bond- 
age, but hath extended mercy unto us" fEzra 
ix. 6). 

Now take Nehemiah. The whole of the ninth 
chapter is taken up with that wonderful con- 
fession made by Nehemiah, the reforming legis- 
lator, as it were, for the country. He lays 
before God, how God had done for them every- 
thing he could in the way of blessing, and at 
last he says: " Thou gavest them saviours who 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



*3 



saved tliem out of the hand of their enemies. 
But after they had rest. " . . . You say, ' ' I know 
what this life of rest is. I entered into it and had 
blessing for a time, but I fell back, and there is 
no hope for me." Listen : £ ' After they had rest, 
they did evil again before thee ; therefore lef test 
thou them in the hand of their enemies, so that 
they had the dominion over them; yet when 
they returned, and cried unto thee, thou heard- 
est them from heaven; and many times didst 
thou deliver them according to thy mercies ; 
and testifiedst against them, that thou mightest 
bring them again unto thy law ; yet they dealt 
proudly and hearkened not unto thy command- 
ments but sinned against thy judgments (which 
if a man do he shall live in them) ; and with- 
drew the shoulder, and hardened their neck, and 
would not hear. They would not give ear ; now, 
therefore, our God, the great, and the terrible 
God, who keepest covenant and mercy, let not all 
the trouble seem little before thee that hath come 
upon us, on our kings, on our princes, and on our 
priests, and on our prophets, and on our fathers 
and on all thy people, since the time of the kings 
of Assyria unto this day. . . . In thy great good- 
ness that thou gavest them, and in the large and 
fat land which thou gavest before them, neither 
turned they from their wicked works ' ' (Xehe- 
miah ix. 27-35). From that moment of confes- 
sion God began to bless them. 



84 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



I have now traced the perpetual falls of Israel 
for hundreds of years ; the evils of the nation's 
experience and the goodness of God. He came 
to them first, as a nation, in Egypt; second, 
he came to them in the land of Canaan, when 
they had i:mt themselves in the power of the 
enemies, and he gave them saviours ; third, he 
came to them when the kingdom had been 
divided and had become still more separated 
from God ; he , sent away ten tribes from the 
other two, and then when those two utterly 
failed to comprehend and prosper by that lesson 
he sent them into captivity; then he brought 
them back into the land of possession and privi- 
lege, but the land was then nearly desolate, 
and the returned caj)tives had only a troubled 
peace and a partial liberty. That is, perhaps, 
your condition, and you say : " There is no use 
talking to me now about the life of peace and 
holiness and of power; it is impossible for such 
a one as I. " 

Now I want to bring you to the position of 
privilege. Read in Haggai what God says of 
those who have just come out of bondage into a 
condition of liberty, and yet have no peace, no 
power, no life and no joy. The edict of Cyrus 
was issued about 535 or 536 ; the people came out 
from Babylonish captivity and reached Jerusa- 
lem in safety under Zerubbabel ; they took pos- 
session of the land again in peace, and might 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



85 



have started a life of power, progress and pros- 
perity from that moment. In the year 520 the 
prophets Haggai and Zechariah were raised np 
by G-od to speak to the people of their present 
position. They had had fifteen or sixteen years 
possession of the land, deliverance from cap- 
tivity, years of possibility, x>rogress and peace. 
What had they done with those years of oppor- 
tunity? 

Many say, ' c I heard of this life of rest when 
I was in bondage to the world, and I came back, 
made a covenant, and took possession of what 
I thought was the land of Jerusalem — the city 
of peace — but it has never been a blessing to me. 
What is wrong in my consecration? I gave 
myself to G-od, looked for power, I pleaded for 
the fullness of the Spirit, asked for a baptism ; 
I thought I had something, but it never came to 
anything." Brethren, the trouble is this : You 
have been too much concerned for yourself in- 
stead of being concerned with the Lord God 
A Imighty and his work. Remember those strik- 
ing words, the idea of which occurs so repeatedly 
in the epistles, ' 4 Whether ye eat or drink or 
whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 
You ate and drank that you might get strong ; 
you ate and drank that you might get rich and 
fat in spiritual things ; perhaps you took work 
for the Lord that you might be powerful ; you 
entered upon the position which the Lord 



86 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



accorded to you that you might become great in 
the eyes of men, and it has been one long failure. 

Look at the prophecy of Haggai. It is con- 
tained on but one page, .yet it covers a period 
of three months and a half. It begins on the 
first day of the sixth month- of the second year 
of Darius the king, and it ends on the twenty- 
fourth day of the ninth month in the second 
year of Darius the king. Haggai describes four 
visions in the two short chapters. 

What is the first revelation which the Lord 
gives to Haggai, whose name means " the visi- 
ble one. " 6 ' Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts, 
saying, This people say, the time is not come, 
the time that the Lord's house should be built/' 
Yet, in II. Chron. xxxvi. and Ezra i. we read that 
Cyrus made an edict that the people should 
build God a house. It was the one purpose of 
their deliverance from the bondage into which 
they had fallen. This bondage was not like the 
bondage of Egypt into which they were born ; 
the name Babel or Babylon means confusion, and 
they had gone to Babylon, the city of confusion, 
simply because they were seeking their own things 
instead of the things of God. They had years 
of captivity and trial and pain, and were deliv- 
ered from bondage solely for one purpose, that 
they might get away from confusion. God is 
not the author of Babylon or confusion, he is the 
author of peace, if we will only take it. Judah 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



87 



and Benjamin were brought ont from Babel that 
they might build a house of God, and yet six- 
teen years passed by with practically no fruit. 
How many years have you gone on in what you 
have called a position of privilege, as church 
members, and yet have done little or nothing to 
the glory of God? You have had perhaps six- 
teen years of grace with grand opportunities for 
building, the one purpose for which you were 
saved. Now, the Lord says to you, " This peo- 
ple say, the time is not come, the time that the 
Lord's house should be built." He means that 
Christian after Christian keeps saying, "It is 
time for me to think of my soul, I must go to 
convention, service, meeting, conference, place 
after place where I can get a blessing." But 
they are not building God's house ; they are not 
seeking his glory. Beloved, you get stuffed to 
repletion, and grow sick at last, but you do not 
go out and live and work for the glory of God 
and for the true building of the church. That 
is why you have been dismayed and troubled. 

In the fourth verse he says, " Is it time for 
you, oh ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and 
this house lies waste? " The object of every true 
convention or service is that the spiritual house 
of the Lord (Eph. ii. 19-22) might be built. If 
you do not serve the Lord night and day ; if your 
money, your thoughts, your plans, your desires 
are not wholly, absolutely, ceaselessly, consecrated 



88 THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 

to building the house of the Lord, no wonder 
that the blessing of God is not upon you. You 
will never have God's blessing while you are 
hugging yourself with the thought, ' ' I must get 
into the ceiled house, I must be safe. Am I 
safe from the devils, am I safe from the foxes, 
am I safe from the miasma, can I in my family 
be secure? " Poor downtrodden, disheartened 
Christians are always asking what more they can 
do to get the blessing into their homes, their 
souls, their ceiled houses. Look at the house of 
the Lord, at the church of God, at the world 
around about you ! The church of God ought 
to stand with its blazing dome of gold lighted 
up with the light of heaven, to show to the 
heathen the glory of God. What could the 
prophets say of the Lord's chosen people who 
had a double deliverance — first, nationally from 
Egypt, and then personally from Babylon, when 
they saw them putting up cedar houses, beauti- 
ful villas with an elegant landscape garden, 
and every provision made for their nice little 
property, and their family inheritance which 
they were bequeathed with such care. As long 
as Christians are so careful about their dollars, 
their homes, and their ceiled houses, and the 
Lord's house lies waste, there is no blessing from 
God. 

What came to these people in the time of Hag- 
gai ? Though they have had their bread, their 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



89 



liberty, their privileges, their possibilities, they 
experienced seven disappointments (i. 6-9). 
' 6 Ye have sown much, and bring in little ; ye 
eat, but ye have not enough." You go to con- 
ventions and try to stuff your souls, but go away 
very heavy. " Ye drink, but are not filled with 
drink ; ye clothe you, but there is none warm ; 
and he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put 
into a bag with holes. . . . Ye looked for much, 
and lo ! it came to little ; and when ye brought it 
home, I did blow upon it. ' ? You go back to your 
ceiled house in ISew York, or Brooklyn, or Lon- 
don, and carry home from your conventions 
three or four note-books stuffed full with notes. 
Beloved, if you think that because you get a 
sense of pleasure and drink down the exhorta- 
tions to holy living without any effort at all, you 
are going to gain much, you will find that all has 
come to very little. 

A little child, a sweet little girl, sat playing 
one day upon the floor of a hall, in England, 
where she had just come to stay with a friend, 
and where there was a beautiful window of 
stained glass. Suddenly, the sun came out, and 
the whole floor was illuminated with beautiful 
colors. The child saw them and uttered an ex- 
clamation of delight. She ran to the spot, and, 
pulling out her pocket-handkerchief, i a i^ \x 
over the colors on the floor, and the handker- 
chief took all the colors. She folded it over 



90 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



three times and said, ' ' 1 will take it to 
mamma." She carried home the handkerchief, 
carefully folded, and the next day, pulling it 
out, said, "Mamma, mamma, come, and I will 
show you such a beautiful thing. ' ' She opened 
her handkerchief and exclaimed, " Oh, mamma, 
it is all gone ! where is it gone to ? " 

Brethren, you cannot keep God's colors from 
heaven by wrapping them up in a handker- 
chief. " Ye took it home, and I did blow 
upon it." 

I heard another story told with great effect at 
Keswick some years ago. One of the speakers 
said that he had a friend in Ireland who was 
always afraid of death, and yet he was a Chris- 
tian who longed to be nearer to God every day. 
This man said, " I don't know what will happen 
when I am dying, and I think the best way will 
be for me to have a record of my experiences, so 
that when I am dying I may have them by me 
to help me recall the goodness of the Lord." 
He wrote the records, and when he was dying 
he told his faithful servant to bring him his ex- 
periences, so that he might read them and be 
comforted. The servant went away, but re- 
turned after a few minutes and exclaimed, ' £ Oh, 
master, master, the experiences are all gone; 
the rats have eaten every one of them ! ' ' 

Brethren, the rats will eat every one of your 
experiences if they are all you are going to 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



91 



lean upon. There is this sevenfold disappoint- 
ment to the people of God, who dwell in their 
ceiled houses while the house of God lies 
waste. 

Now notice the sevenfold charge of God. (1.) 
Five times in this one page of prophecy the Lord 
says, t£ Consider ! " Twice it is, " Consider your 
ways" (i. 5, 7), and then it is to Consider and 
see what the Lord is and what the Lord will do, 
and what the blessing of God is meant to be 
(ii. 15, 18). You must begin the life of peace 
and power in the place of privilege. If you 
have entered the place of privilege and then go 
back to the old life, you will have no blessing. 
So the Lord begins, " Consider your ways, your 
will, your power, your love, your purposes." 

But that is not all. The Lord says : (2.) " Go 
up to the mountain" (i. 8). That is to say, go 
to the place where God's provision is ready for 
you. You want timber for the Lord's work to 
build up the Lord's house ; you want supply, go 
up to the mountain. (3.) "Bring wood;" and 
(4.) -'Build the house." 

The next charge is repeated three times over 
(ii. 4), "Be strong, be strong, be strong." God 
does not say to go and make yourself strong, 
but be made strong ; the Lord does the strength- 
ening. (6.) "Work" (ii. 4), and (7.) "Fear ye 
not" (ii. 5). 

Look at those seven charges or encourage- 



92 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



ments. Consider your ways ; then consider the 
Lord ; consider Jesus, the author and finisher of 
our faith. When you have considered well say, 
' ' The Lord has called me out of myself to his 
work, to get right out of my ceiled house. I 
will go to the mountain where the provisions of 
God are. You must go and get your supplies. 
God says, "Here is the supply, come up." 
When Moses said, " I cannot meet this people," 
God said, "Come up into the mountain," and 
there God showed him his glory and gave him 
his supply; the Lord gave him the pattern of 
the tabernacle, he gave him the strength and 
said, ' ( My presence shall go with you and I will 
give you rest." Moses went down reflecting the 
glory of God. You will never reflect the glory 
of the Lord at all if you simply go home with 
your pocket-handkerchief full of reflections. 
But go up into the presence of the Lord on the 
mountain and take his supply, and go down 
now in all the meekness of a servant and say, 
' ' I am going to build for the Lord ; he gives the 
power, the strength, the blessing." Then when 
you begin to build you will say, "I feel so weak, 
I cannot teach, I cannot work, I cannot speak." 
The word will come, "Be strong, be strong, be 
strong " — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all speak- 
ing. "Fear ye not." How good God is ! We 
poor helpless, hungering, doubting, desponding 
souls, can hear him saying, " Consider your 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



93 



ways, be strong, work, fear not, for I am with 
you, saith the Lord." 

Now notice the seven promises of God. 
Brethren, these promises are very beautiful, but 
to claim them you must be at the Lord's work, 
not your own. All of them contain the words, 
' ' I will bless you " — a sevenfold exclamation of 
my text: "From this day will I bless you." 
It refers to the day on which the foundation- 
stone of the Lord's house was laid ; the twenty- 
fourth day of the ninth month, after they had 
been three months and a half listening to him. 

The first promise, the first "I will," of the 
Lord is, "Go up to the mountain and bring 
wood and build the house ; and I will take 
pleasure in it" (i. 8). The pleasure of the Lord 
shall prosper in your hands. The promise is so 
simple, so gracious, so tender. You say, ' c Can 
the Lord like my work? " It is impossible with- 
out faith to please him, but if you have faith he 
says, "I will take pleasure in it." 

The second promise is in the same verse, ' ' I 
will be glorified, saith the Lord." ' ' Glorify ye 
the Lord in your body and in your spirits which 
are his." You say, "What, a worm of the 
earth glorify the Lord ! " Yes, it is with the 
' 6 worm of the earth " that he is going to thresh 
the mountain. Because the Lord Jesus humbled 
himself even unto the dust to build the house of 
the Lord, God set him at his own right hand 



94 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



and gave him a name that is above every name, 
yon and I are called to the same work and the 
same kind of a reward. 

The third promise is in the second chapter and 
sixth verse. The Lord says first of all what 
view he will take of the work ; "I will like it 
and be glorified in it ; " now he says what he 
will do. " I will shake.' 7 It is the way he un- 
dertakes to beat back your enemies ; whether 
they are in the heavenly places, in the sea or on 
the dry land, he will shake them off. This very 
verse is quoted in the epistle to the Hebrews 
(xii. 26), when the writer is telling of the glori- 
ous position we have in Mount Zion, the new 
Jerusalem. We have come to Mount Zion that 
we may glorify God, and God says he will shake 
the heavens and the earth. When the shaking- 
is ended, only the permanent things remain. 
" Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which can- 
not be moved, let us have grace, whereby we 
may serve God acceptably with reverence and 
godly fear; for our God is a consuming fire." 
The very thing to make us steadfast is the fact 
that God is going to shake the shakable things 
of the universe in order that the permanent 
things may remain. 

The fourth promise is " I will fill this house 
with glory " (ii. 7). That was fulfilled when the 
Lord Jesus Christ came to the second temple 
and filled it with his glory. The house that 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



95 



was built afterwards was also to be filled with 
Ms glory. We say, "Poor worms of the earth 
that we are to bring stones for God's house." 
We put them together and say. • ' It looks very 
poor. " "I wili fill this house with glory, saith 
the Lord of hosts. " Take courage, brother. It 
is when you have failed that the Lord conies. 

Still further we read, "In this place will I 
give peace, saith the Lord of hosts" (ii. 9). 
Whj does He keep saying, ' • Saith the Lord of 
hosts? " It is because he is conqueror of all. 

God's sixth promise is, "I will overthrow the 
throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the 
strength of the kingdoms of the heathen ; and I 
will overthrow chariots and those that ride in 
them; and the horses and their riders shall 
come down, every one by the sword of his 
brother" (ii. 22). When Jehoshaphat went out 
against Moab and Amnion, he did not have to 
kill ; they killed one another ( II. Chronicles xx.) ; 
and you and I will not have to kill our enemies ; 
they will kill each other. Only go forward in 
the strength of the Lord, and he will put the 
enemies to flight. 

The last promise of the seven says, ' ' In that 
day, saith the Lord of hosts, will I take thee 
. . . my servant . . . saith the Lord, and will 
make thee as a signet ; for I have chosen thee, 
saith the Lord of hosts." Humble worker 
shrinking back fearfully, do you hear the words 



90 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



of the Lord : "I will take pleasure in it, I will 
be glorified in your poor work, I will shake the 
earth and the heavens, I will fill the house with 
glory, I will give peace, I will overthrow all 
your enemies, and will make thee a signet on 
my right hand, for I have chosen thee." 
Blessed be God ! Can you doubt him now? 

Now, look at the grand basis on which these 
promises and encouragements are built. ' ' Then 
spake Haggai, the Lord's messenger in the Lord's 
message unto the people, saying, "I am with 
you, saith the Lord" (i. 13). Again, " I am with 
you, saith the Lord of hosts " (ii. 4) ; and again, 
" My Spirit remaineth among you" (ii. 5). There 
is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — the Lord, the 
God of heaven, the Lord of hosts, the king of 
earth, and the Spirit remaining always ready — 
the mighty Trinity in unity, undertaking for the 
feeble escaped remnants, the poor despised 
people. These feeble Jews built the temple and 
the city of the Lord of hosts. Will you under- 
take your part in this great work ? When you 
calmly, meekly and humbly enter into covenant, 
and lay the foundation-stone which God calls 
you to lay, he says to you what he says to Zer- 
ubbabel (Zech. iv. 9): " The hands of Zerub- 
babel have laid the foundations of this house ; 
his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt 
know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto 
you. For who hath despised the day of small 



THE WAY OF BLESSING. 



97 



things? For they shall rejoice and shall see the 
plummet in the hands of Zernbbabel with those 
seven; they are the eyes of the Lord." We 
take the fullness of the Spirit, not for blessing, 
peace and pleasure, but for power to serve our 
God, and as the feeble remnant put their trust 
in the Lord, he fills them to overflowing with 
spiritual power, and the temple of the Lord 
shall rapidly be built, and the last stone may 
soon be put in. Who shall put it in? Perhaps 
one of us shall put in the last stone of that tem- 
ple with shoutings of "Grace, grace unto it." 
Then the Lord shall come and all the saints with 
him. Will you be ready? 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



" Though I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me ; 
thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine ene- 
mies, and thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that 
which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever : For- 
sake not the works of thine own hands." — Psalm cxxxviii. 7, 8- 

Intelligence is absolutely necessary in spirit- 
ual matters as it is in temporal affairs. St. Paul, in 
one of his beautiful prayers for the Ephesians, 
asks that the eyes of their understanding may 
be enlightened, in order that they may know 
the riches of the provision made for men in Christ 
Jesus, and what would be the glory of his inherit- 
ance in the saints, if they would only carry out 
the high purposes of God, which he has revealed 
in his Son. God deals with us according to our 
spiritual purpose and earnestness, and in propor- 
tion as we seek to realize our high inheritance 
of reason as well as of grace, God will bless us in 
this world of temptation and trial. 

It is easy to say, " Thank God, I am saved 
through the blood of the Lamb, and I need not 
fear God's wrath or man's temptation; God will 
keep me safely, because he has provided a way 



SOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



99 



of salvation for me in Christ Jesus." Remem- 
ber that while salvation hangs absolutely and 
solely npon the free grace of God, the final and 
apparent enjoyment of God hangs distinctly 
npon the measure of our spiritual apprehension 
and understanding of the things which God offers 
to the true believer in his Son. Therefore, it is 
' by no means unimportant for us to ask ourselves 
again and again, what have we apprehended of 
Christ? Even after St. Paul had been a Christian 
for over thirty years, and had been a man of 
most remarkable progress in spiritual apprehen- 
sion and enjoyment, he writes to the Philippi- 
ans that he does not at all profess to have appre- 
hended that for which he was apprehended of 
God in Christ Jesus. We are apprehended of 
God in Christ for vast blessings, vast privileges, 
vast possibilities, not only in the eternal glory 
after we have done with temptation, but in the 
present sphere of perpetual temptation. This 
is no mere metaphysical distinction, but is of 
tremendous practical importance. 

The Lord's Prayer is perhaps one of the brief- 
est we could be called upon to utter in the pres- 
ence of our Father in Heaven; it is also the full- 
est that can be formed by human lips, or put 
forth in human language. The Lord Jesus Christ 
said, "After this manner pray ye." He also 
said, " When ye pray, say " Our Father, which 
is in Heaven. ' ' Therefore, it is a model form in 



100 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



which true Christians should be constantly pray- 
ing. ' ' Lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
us from evil," is sufficient for a petition, but it 
is not sufficient merely to say it. We must in- 
telligently apprehend what it means. The 
Christian church is continually falling under the 
pressure of temptation from different quarters. 
Christians too often fall because they never pause 
to consider whether all this temptation which 
crushes them comes from the same enemy, the 
same source, or if there are different forms of 
temptation from different sources. It behooves 
us to understand whence these different forms of 
temptation come, in what way they will present 
themselves to the soul, how they will injure it, 
and how these particular forms of temptation 
may successfully be met. 

JSTow, it is perfectly certain that all temptation 
comes from the enemy. God tempteth no man, 
says St. James, neither can he be tempted with 
evil. He tries his children, as he tried Abra- 
ham. The same word is used, both in Hebrew 
and Greek, to express different forms of tempta- 
tion or trial. When we are tried it is to bring 
out that which is good ; when we are tempted it 
is to lead us into that which is evil. God must 
try his creatures in order to prove that they are 
good ; the devil tempts the creature to see if it 
be possible to lead the creature away from God, 
and to bring that creature under his own des- 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



101 



potic authority. It is one thing to be innocent ; 
it is another thing to be virtuous. It is one 
thing to be like Adam, created after the image 
of God in perfect purity and simplicity; it is 
another thing to be like the perfected Christ, 
who was tried and tempted in all points like as 
we are, yet without sin. Remember that while the 
blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin, 
conformity to the image of Christ, wrought in 
us by the Holy Spirit, means that we, being 
changed from glory to glory, may become like 
the Son of God, and at last be actually one with 
him, seeing him as he is, and being exact fac- 
similes of his perfect image. If we could only 
apprehend this, it would change all our thoughts 
about the life we are living ; we should feel that 
there is not a moment, not a talent, not a possi- 
bility of our being that should not be conse- 
crated entirely to God, and that should not be 
rendered in tender, grateful, humble submission 
to his authority ; we should feel that we could 
not afford to go out into the world and engage 
in its pleasures, its pursuits, and its ambitions, 
not because we have not the money, but because 
we cannot afford the peril, the temptation, the 
risk to the soul's peace and progress. Our ambi- 
tion, our pleasure should be to get nearer to God. 
Until such a heavenly aspiration fills our 
souls, we are not even attempting to apprehend 
that for which we are apprehended in Christ 



102 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Jesus. It is one tiling to be innocent, clean, 
spotless ; it is another tiling to be powerful, 
great, and glorious in the sight of God and in the 
face of our enemies. 

We should apprehend that our high calling 
of God in Christ Jesus is that we be like Mm in 
everything; not only pure and spotless as 
Adam was' before he sinned, but virtuous. Vir- 
tue is tested morality, it is power proved, it is 
the capabilities of the soul exercised until the 
qualities and the graces with which a man is 
endowed, come out into actual exhibition. God 
has called us out of darkness into his marvel- 
ous light that we might exhibit Christ's virtues 
(I. Peter ii. 9). You do not prove the virtue 
in a machine until you test it, and show the pub- 
lic that it actually answers the purpose of the 
inventor. You do not prove the intelligence or 
virtue of a child simply by making it sit still 
and smile. You must exhibit the powers of 
body, brain, and heart before the neighbors, if 
you wish to prove that your child has peculiar 
graces, excellencies, and powers. So it is with 
the child of God ; he must expect trial in order 
to develop and exhibit virtue. We have many 
enemies presenting to us different forms of 
temptation, which we can meet intelligently and 
powerfully only in proportion as we understand 
from whence the temptation comes, and how in 
each case that temptation is to be overcome. 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



103 



First with regard to our enemies. Have you 
ever noticed the strikingly solemn way in which 
the different authors of the Psalms were led to 
think about their enemies? These were, for the 
most part, physical enemies, hostile forces of a 
human form. Yet no less than forty-two times 
in the Psalms alone do we find the words my or 
" mine enemies," besides the many occasions in 
which they speak of their enemies, thine ene- 
mies, enemies and enemy in general. Do you 
not see at once that the writers of those Psalms 
must have had a very solemn appreciation of 
the fact that they were living in the presence of 
and in danger from very great enemies ? To them 
they were awfully real and really awful, and yet 
they were only physical enemies. How much 
more then to realize that we have great enemies 
in the spiritual domain, and that they are ever 
around us and upon us, and have peculiar 
force to use against our poor souls. 

Praise be to God, even in the Old Testament 
dispensation we find the Psalmists speaking 
calmly of their enemies, and glorying in the 
fact that they have a grand deliverer. In nearly 
every case where you find the words "mine 
enemies, ' ' you find ' ' deliverer ' ' or some kin- 
dred word.* Take for instance: "Though I 
walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive 



* Look also in Psalm cxliii. 3, 11, 12 ; cxlii. 6, 7; xxv. 2, 19, 21; xxvii. 2,6, 
11-14. 



104 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



me ; thou slialt stretch forth thine hand against 
the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand 
shall save me." What confidence we see there. 

Take another passage, Psalm xxiii. 5 : "Thou 
preparest a table before me in the presence 
of mine enemies." That is a blessed thought. 
Let the enemies come in all their power 
and seem to be surrounding you, so that there 
is no escape, the Lord calmly prepares a table, 
and you sit down and enjoy your food in the 
very presence of your enemies. Take one 
more, because it is so beautiful; the great 
Psalm of the Deliverer, xviii. 3, 37, 40, 48, 50. 
No less than seven times in that one Psalm 
you have deliver, delivered, or delivers; but 
what do you read about your enemies ? u I 
will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be 
praised : so shall I be saved from mine ene- 
mies. ... I have pursued mine enemies 
and overtaken them : neither did I turn again 
until they were consumed. . . . Thou hast 
also given me the necks of mine enemies, that I 
might destroy them that hate me. . . . He 
delivereth me from mine enemies : yea, thou 
lifteth me above those that rise up against me : 
thou hast delivered me from the violent man. 

. . Great deliverance givethhe." Seethe 
great deliverance which the Lord gives to his 
anointed. That Psalm is the Psalm of the De- 
liverer, coupled with the fact of the presence of 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



105 



the enemies; and though the man knows that 
his enemies are there, he is sure of deliverance ; 
he is confident of protection, but he intelligently 
looks to the Lord, and claims in the Lord a 
rock, a strength, a buttress, a fortress, every- 
thing that is required. 

Now notice how the Lord is a buttress and a 
fortress, a protector and a shield against all 
the assaults of our enemies, if we rightly under- 
stand what those enemies are. We turn to the 
spiritual domain, but let me use the physical 
enemies of Israel as an illustration of the way 
in which God permits the enemies to make 
attacks, and yet frustrates every one of those 
attacks, so long as his people trust in him. 

First, what are the foems of temptation 
which array themselves as the enemies of the 
Christian? The five great enemies that attempt 
to injure the believer are sin, the flesh, the 
world, the devil and death. Each of these pre- 
sents totally different forms of temptation to the 
believer, and seeks to captivate us by totally dif- 
ferent lines of action, and we cannot intelligently 
meet these different foes until we apprehend the 
means of deliverance which God has provided 
for us in Christ Jesus. Remember, however, 
that no man, as long as he lives in the mortal 
body, is ever free from the presence of his ene- 
mies. We are delivered out of the hand of 
those enemies, but are not delivered from their 



106 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



existence, and to say that sin or death, or any 
other foe no longer loesses upon a man's soul, 
is to falsify every statement of Scripture and 
every experience of the true believer. That is 
neither more nor less than the devil's own lie, to 
persuade a soul that this is a dispensation of 
extinction ; it is only a dispensation of subjuga- 
tion. There is no extinction of any temptation 
or enemy that brings temptation, but there is, 
blessed be God, a perpetual deliverance in the 
spiritual domain as there was intended to be for 
Israel in the temporal or physical domain. Be 
ing delivered out of the hand of our enemies, 
they have no power or claim over us lawfully ; 
we are set free from all of them. God does not 
intend his people ever to be overcome, — " more 
than conquerors through him that loved us," is 
intended to be the experience, moment by mo- 
ment, of every true child of God. Unconsciously 
we may yield to forms of temptation of which 
we do not know the meaning or existence. This 
is the sin of a true, faithful child of God. He is 
limited not only in his ability but in his knowl- 
edge ; because of the infirmity of his nature he 
cannot know yet as he is known. But blessed 
be God, the blood of Christ is cleansing every 
moment, so that if a child of God dies at any 
moment the blood cleanses, and by God's grace, 
not on our own merit, we pass into the presence 
of God spotlessly pure. Remember that, because 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



107 



there are two forms of subtle temptation. One 
is to ask what is the good of the Lord Jesus 
being a perfect Saviour if he does not perfectly 
keep ? The answer is that he never professed to 
keep you perfectly, but only according to your 
faith. The other question is, if I am perpetu- 
ally sinning, what is the good of claiming holi- 
ness from him? God never said there would be 
perfect holiness, but that there would be perfect 
keeping according to the measure of your faith 
and trust. As I once said to Mrs. Booth, " You 
preach a perfect sinner, but I preach a perfect 
Saviour. ' ' 

As to the forms of temptation let us first deal 
with what is known as sin. Sin is totally dis- 
tinct from sins. Sins are never embodied as a 
foe ; they are spoken of as an outcome of sin, 
the works which we have produced. All the 
sins of a true believer are washed away by the 
blood of the Lamb, but there still remains the 
old evil part called sin, which is personified by 
the Apostle Paul in Romans, sixth and seventh 
chapters. This sin, as a personified force in me, 
means, I think, that old, evil taskmaster which 
dominates every child of Adam from the mo- 
ment that our first parents fell in the Garden of 
Eden until the soul is delivered by regeneration 
and by the indwelling of Christ. We are always 
in the presence of temptation from sin. As 
a taskmaster sin no longer stands over the 



108 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



believer, but is still always pressing upon us as 
an enemy seeking to lead us into evil. But we 
have a perfect Saviour and a perfect deliverance 
to the extent of our knowledge, our faith and 
our trust in the Lord Jesus ; beyond that I know 
of no perfection, therefore nothing that we bring 
forth is perfect in itself. 

Sin is a dominating influence that once held 
absolute sway over the child of Adam ; but the 
moment that child of Adam is regenerated by 
the Holy Ghost, and admitted into the Lord 
Jesus Christ, he has died unto sin. Men say 
that they are dead to sin because the words in 
Romans vi. and Colossians iii. are translated, 
" Ye are dead ; " but the Greek is, " You died." 
They refer not to a state at the present moment, 
but to an act performed for us by Christ Jesus. 
By virtue of his death upon Calvary's cross, we 
by inclusion died in him, because he died as if 
he were all of us in one. We do not experience 
a sense of death for we have none of the dying 
to do ; it was done. Christ died so as to have 
done with sin, and to give us the same position 
and the same appreciation of the position which 
he occupies and enjoys, namely, that we have 
been released from the power and domination of 
sin as a slave-master. St. Paul says again and 
again that he is freed from sin, freed from the 
condemnation, and also from the task-power of 
sin (Romans vi. 7, 18). He goes on to say 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



109 



(Romans vii.) that sin as a present pressing force 
came upon Ms soul once when he was under the 
law, and sin revived and he died. Then he 
says, " If I do anything wrong, now that I have 
come to appreciate Christ, if I am led to do any- 
thing evil by the pressure of sin. it is no more I, 
but sin that dwelleth in me." He asks, "What 
is to be done ? How am I to get free from the 
power of this awful temptation? Thanks be to 
God,'' he says, "I thank God, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord.'' He takes hold of the truth 
that once for all he has been delivered from that 
fearful bondage, that terrible task-power, which 
sin had over him in Adam's state, and now hav- 
ing been put into Christ, he is a delivered soul. 

Xow in order to make this doctrinal state- 
ment experimental, see the illustration of this 
in the experience of the children of Israel. 
Egypt represents sin as a taskmaster that tries 
to hold the children of Adam. God delivered 
the children of Israel from Egypt by giving 
them that passage through the Red Sea, and 
then by drowning their present pressing task- 
masters who followed them. They were thus 
forever set free from the power of the Egyptian 
taskmasters. Nothing could lead them back 
into slavery in Egypt except their own free will. 
God caused the Red Sea to roll between them 
and their foes, and they were actually delivered, 
so as to be in God's charge if they would only 



110 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



face God's holiness at Mount Sinai. The mo- 
ment you are saved from your enemy, you must 
be prepared to see and walk according to the 
holiness of God henceforth. If the children of 
Israel had been ready to live according to the 
holiness of God, they need never have stood in 
fear of Egypt, their old taskmaster, as long as 
their nation existed. But they chose to serve 
other gods, and so in the days of the kings the 
Egyptian forces came into the land of the people 
of God again and again, and God said that he 
would let them go back into Egypt simply be- 
cause they would not walk in the holiness of 
God. You have been set free; and are to be 
forever for God, and not to fear your old ene- 
mies or to meddle with sin. 

How shall we meet sin when it rises up and 
says : 4 4 You are my slave ; you say you are free 
from the wrath of God and the power of sin, but 
I claim you as mine." You know the force of 
the temptation to say: "I cannot face it; I 
have not the courage ; I am afraid. " What right 
have you to be afraid? 44 Fear ye not ; " that is 
the privilege of the true believer. 4 4 Be strong, 
fear ye not for I am with thee. ' ' The moment 
the old evil power comes and says : 4 4 You know 
that you were a [slave to that lust, you could 
not resist it ; you were a drunkard, and you are 
my slave ; ' ' then look up into the face of God 
and say, confidently : "By the grace of God I 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. HI 

am what I am, and his grace which was be- 
stowed upon me was not in vain, so that I am 
delivered." 

This temptation from the old taskmaster, sin, 
is one thing that causes the child of God to fall 
so often. They thought that they had the liberty 
and freedom of the children of God, but the first 
time they passed the old temptation, they said, 
" Oh, my God, I cannot resist; " and they fell. 
They have not apprehended that for which they 
were apprehended of God in Christ Jesus, to 
live a life delivered from the pressure of the old 
taskmaster, and given absolutely unto God. I 
tried for two years to feel dead unto sin, and I 
never exj)erienced the liberty which that thought 
ought to bring until I suddenly saw the other 
side, " I will live unto God." The right hand of 
the Lord has dashed in pieces our enemy, sin 
(Exodus xv. 1-10), and when the old enemy says, 
4 ' I will pursue ; I will follow after ; * . . . I 
will overtake, I will divide the spoil ; my lust 
shall be satisfied upon them ; " say, with Moses, 
"Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea cov- 
ered them ; they sank as lead in the mighty 
waters." Claim an accomplished deliverance 
through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and 
the resurrection power which leads us to God. 

Second, how shall we meet the temptation 
that comes from the flesh f The llesh is quite 
distinct from sin ; it is the medium through 



112 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



which sin leads us into captivity. It is the force 
within ns which constantly inclines us to evil ; 
it is that lower part of our nature which has 
come into the domination of sin and the devil 
from the moment that Adam and Eve fell, and 
which has held us captives with regard to our 
peace of mind, our appetites, tastes, and desires, 
until we are brought into Christ Jesus and 
become new creatures in him. This flesh is a 
perpetual, subtle pressure from within, quite dis- 
tinct from anything that oppresses us from with- 
out. It claims to have opportunities for gratifi- 
cation to present to us, to have pleasant things 
that shall satisfy, comfort, and cheer us. The 
temptation is very great and very real, and may 
be expected to last to the very end of our exist- 
ence upon earth. 

St. Paul carefully distinguishes between the 
flesh and the Spirit. He says that the moment 
we are born again as children of God, so that 
we can cry ' ' Abba Father, ' ' a new spirit of 
life is introduced into us, and henceforth we 
have two forces working within us and seeking 
to draw us — the one called the Spirit and the 
other the flesh. " The flesh lusteth against the 
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh " (Gal. v. 
17). God claims us on the one hand, and on 
the other the personified evil thing called the 
flesh claims us, and says, "You have always 
been mine, why turn from me ? I offer you ease, 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 113 

I offer you pleasure, I offer you satisfaction. 
Why struggle against your appetites, they are 
your natural instincts? Why should a man not 
take a drink, and enjoy sowing his wild oats? 
Why should he not have a little pleasure in this 
world ? Why should he think that his appetites 
are wrong, because they bring satisfaction to the 
flesh ? ' ' Why ? Because being set free from our 
old taskmaster, sin, and being taken into the death 
of Christ, and into the life of Christ, we belong- 
to God, and the Holy Gfhost has come into us to 
give us a different life. Instead of being ruled 
by the old evil appetites that gave us an inherit- 
ance of evil, we should learn to live unto God. 
The body as well as the mind, the mind as well 
as the heart, the heart as well as the spirit 
should all be brought into subjection to God, so 
that we are no longer to let the old appetites 
work, but are to allow the spirit, which lusts 
against the flesh, to bring us into the heavenly 
life. 

Look at the appetites called fleshly indul- 
gences : ease, carnality, covetousness, pride. 
These are the works, not the fruits of the flesh. 
St. James says that we are tempted when we are 
drawn aside by lust, and "when lust hath con- 
ceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is 
finished (full grown) bringeth forth death." It 
must bring death, because it separates us from 
God. 



114 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



How are we to meet these temptations which 
come from within, and are essentially the temp- 
tations of the old nature within us? The an- 
swer is in every part of the writings of St. Paul, 
that we walk not in the flesh, but give ourselves 
over to the Spirit to walk in the Spirit. The mo- 
ment that we recognize a pressure of lust or temp- 
tation to selfishness, or temper, or fretting, we 
must realize that our life is to be lived unto God, 
and that our hearts are to be set upon things 
above. This is what St. Paul means when he says 
that if we are risen with Christ, we should set 
our affections, our desires upon the things of 
God which are above with Christ at the right 
hand of God the Father (Col. iii. 1, 2). You 
died in order that you might live a new life. 
Live that life! How? By determinedly giving 
yourselves over every moment to the indwelling 
power of God, and no longer yielding to the lust 
within you. 

Look again at the experience of the people of 
Israel. We read in Exodus xii. 38, that "a 
great multitude — a great mixture — went up also 
with them." On the night of their deliverance 
from Egypt they went up a mixed people when 
they should have gone up a powerful people. 
We read later in Numbers xi. 4, that " the mixed 
multitude that was among them fell a lusting : 
and the children of Israel also wept again." 
They allowed themselves to be led by a mixed 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



115 



multitude into this imssion. They said, ' ' Who 
shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the 
fish which we did eat freely in Egypt ; the cu- 
cumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the 
onions, and the garlic ; but now our soul is dried 
away ; there is nothing at all, beside this manna, be- 
fore our eyes. ' ' The children of God are too often 
to-day led by the mixed multitude to think that 
the things which God provides are not enough to 
give satisfaction and comfort and pleasure. The 
mixed multitude say, - - You know you had 
pleasure in the world when you were in bondage 
to sin, you liked the things you had, those 
onions and cucumbers and melons. ' ' The pressure 
is upon you as it was upon the children of Israel, 
because you have a divided heart, because your 
soul is not given over entirely to God. When the 
mind and heart and spirit shall all be given over 
to God the Holy Ghost, then we shall no longer 
have mixed ideas within, and the temptation of 
the flesh, but we shall wholly yield to, and live 
in, the Spirit of God. Whether our temptations 
of the flesh take the form of gross passion, or of 
self-assertion, self-conceit, and self-satisfaction, 
they are to be met by this, ' ' I am alive unto 
God, I belong to the Holy Ghost, I must give 
myself over to him, and walk in the Spirit." 
St. Paul says, "If ye live in the Spirit, then 
walk in the Spirit ; and as many as walk in the 
Spirit, let them be led by the Spirit." 



116 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



The third temptation comes from the world 
which represents three things. St. John says 
(I. ii. 16), " All that is in the world, the lust of 
the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride 
of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." 
Here men's lust of the flesh is described as the 
world. The lust of the flesh in the world is very 
different from the lust of the flesh in us. The 
one is internal, the other external. A man who 
has an impure thought and is alone with himself 
in a dark room, still has the impure thought be- 
fore him. The more he thinks of it, the worse 
it becomes ; he cannot escape from it, except by 
the apprehension of something holy in place of 
something unholy. He can only escape by 
thinking of Christ, of God, and his deliverance ; 
he will find deliverance from the evil by the 
introduction of the good. 

The lust of the flesh in the world is very dif- 
ferent; it is something external, such as a vile 
picture, or the odor of liquor — anything which 
seeks to draw a man into the act of evil. A 
man who sees an impure play in a theater is 
tempted from without, rather than from within, 
until his own passion is aroused and he commits 
sin. There must, therefore, be a totally differ- 
ent way of meeting this temptation from the 
way of meeting that from within. 

Now, what are we to do with the temptation 
from without, that appeals to the eye and ear 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



117 



and mind? If somebody tells me an indelicate 
story or shows me an impure picture, and so 
offers a temptation to the Inst of the flesh, how 
am I to meet it? The devil said to the Lord 
Jesns, ' ' If yon will fall down and worship) me, I 
will give yon all the kingdoms of the world." 
That was a temptation through the eye. When 
he said, ' ' Take that stone and make it bread ; ' ' 
that was a temptation through the Inst of the 
flesh from without. Then tempting Jesns 
through the pride of life, he said: "Yon can 
fall down from this pinnacle because God hath 
said that he will give his angels charge over 
you ; you need not be afraid because yon are 
God's son." So through the pride of life we 
are tempted to say, "I can go into places dan- 
gerous to my soul, though others conld uot." I 
have known many a man to say, " I can go into 
society, others cannot; but I can go without 
any harm." They fall as Jesus would have 
fallen if he had not looked up to God and said, 
"It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord 
thy God." 

Here are the three forms of temptation in the 
world : the lust of the flesh that seeks to kindle 
passion within me through presenting some- 
thing pleasant to the body ; the lust of the eye 
that seeks to kindle an evil desire by presenting 
something attractive to the sight ; the pride of 
life that would make me lean upon self where I 



118 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



ought to depend upon God, and not go into 
temptation. When there is a pressure within, I 
can only escape by presenting a holy thought 
instead of an evil one. When there is a press- 
ure from without, we are bound to do. exactly as 
God commanded Israel to do with regard to 
Moab, Amnion, and Edom, who clearly represent 
to Israel what the lust of the flesh in the world, 
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life repre- 
sent to us. 

Moab and Amnion were the children born of 
incest between Lot and his daughters, and were 
akin in a carnal manner to Isaac and Jacob and 
the children of Israel. Edom is the brother of 
Jacob, but the carnal brother, who marries into 
the world and gives himself over to carnality. 
These three are linked together at least fifty 
times in the Old Testament, and always with the 
same idea. Notice how God taught the chil- 
dren of Israel to treat these three foes, and learn 
how to deal with the lust of the flesh, the lust 
of the eyes, and the pride of life. God says to 
Israel, "Ye are to pass through the coast of 
your brethren, the children of Esau, which dwell 
in Seir ; and they shall be afraid of you : take 
ye good heed unto yourselves therefore : meddle 
not with them ; for I will not give you of their 
land, no, not so much as a foot breadth ; be- 
cause I have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a 
possession. . . . Distress not the Moabites, 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 119 

neither contend with them in battle : for I will 
not give thee of their land for a possession ; be- 
cause I have given Ar unto the children of Lot 
for a possession. . . . And when thou 
comest nigh over against the children of Amnion 
distress them not, nor meddle with them : for I 
will not give thee of the land of the children of 
Ammon any possession ; for I have given it unto 
the children of Lot for a possession" (Deuter- 
onomy ii. 4, 5, 9, 19). This is a remarkable 
charge when we consider that passing through 
the wilderness, the children of Israel could not 
escape going through Moab, Ammon, and Edom. 
You must go through temptations of the world ; 
the man who tries to be a monk, and the woman 
who wishes to be a nun are seeking to escape 
what never can be escaped, for pressure must be 
apprehended from Moab, Ammon, and Edom. 
What are we to do with regard to them? 
"Meddle not with them." Do not fight with 
them, because they are your brethren. Do not 
look in scorn on everyone who does not agree 

with you. Do not condemn Mr. because he 

goes to the theater. You have no right to meddle 
with them either for good or for evil; but re- 
member that it is your place to keep from the 
evil that is among them, and to pass by as quickly 
as you can ; you have no inheritance with them 
any more than they have with you. 

What do we see in the twenty-fifth chapter of 



120 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Numbers ? ' ' Israel abode in Shittim, and the 
people began to commit whoredom with the 
daughters of Moab." The whole chapter is 
given to the lust of the flesh presented through 
Moab to God's people Israel. The temptation 
was such that Israel fell, and Jliey had to be 
blasted and blighted, and thousands of them de- 
stroyed before they could be delivered from the 
cursed effect of the pressure of the lust of the 
flesh through Moab. Moab represents the ac- 
tion of the external lust of the flesh. Look at 
Moab's banishment (Jeremiah xlviii. 1, 11, 28, 
32) : 1 ' Against Moab, thus saith the Lord . . . 
Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he 
hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emp- 
tied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone 
into captivity; therefore his taste remained in 
him, and his scent is not changed. . . 
ye, that dwell in Moab, leave the cities, and 
dwell in the rock, and be like the dove that 
maketh her nest in the sides of the hole's 
mouth. We have heard the pride of Moab (he 
is exceeding proud), his loftiness, and his arro- 
gance, and his pride, and the haughtiness of his 
heart. I know his wrath, saith the Lord, but it 
shall not be so ; his lies shall not so effect it. ' ' 
[Why?] . . . " Thy plants are gone over 
the sea, they reach even to the Sea of Jazer: 
the spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits and 
upon thy vintage. ' ' The whole chapter is filled 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 121 



with the idea of their being drunkards and lust- 
ful men, who walk according to the flesh, and 
God says that he will have to punish them 
according to the nature of their sin. They will 
not give themselves to anything except vessels 
that are yielded to lust, therefore God says, 
"I will empty you out of your vessels, you that 
are empty, and you shall be heavily punished." 

Ammon represents the lust of the eye. No- 
tice how (Judges x. xi), when the children of Is- 
rael came into possession of their own land given 
them by God, Ammon came down to claim it, 
and tried in every way to rob Israel of their in- 
heritance. See what is said "Concerning the 
Ammonites " (Jer. xlix. 1, 4, 5) : " Thus saith the 
Lord, . . . Wherefore gloriest thou in the val- 
leys, thy flowing valley, backsliding daugh- 
ter? that trusted in her treasures, saying, Who 
shall come unto me ? Behold ! I will bring a fear 
[a punishment] upon thee, ' ' saith the Lord God 
of Hosts. This is their punishment; (Ezekiel 
xxv. 3) God says, " Say unto the Ammonites, 
hear the word of the Lord God ; thus saith the 
Lord God ; because thou saidst, aha ! against my 
sanctuary, when it was profaned; and against 
the land of Israel when it was desolate; and 
against the house of Judah, when they went into 
captivity ; behold ! therefore, I will deliver thee 
to the men of the east for a possession, and they 
shall set their palaces in thee, and make their 



122 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



dwellings in thee; they shall eat thy fruit, 
and they shall drink thy milk." It is a good 
land that they have cherished and nourished ; 
why must they hand it over to the enemy? Be- 
cause their eyes lusted after Israel's possessions, 
and God brings punishment upon them exactly 
according to their sin. 

The pride of life is seen in Edom (Jer. xlix. 7). 
Concerning Edom, thus saith the Lord of Hosts : 
"Is wisdom no more in Teman? Is counsel 
perished from the prudent? Is their wisdom van- 
ished? Flee ye, turn back, dwell deep, O, 
inhabitants of Dedan ; for I will bring the calam- 
ity of Esau upon him, the time that I will visit 
him." The wli€)le of Obadiah's prophecy is 
given over to a judgment of the people of Edom, 
because they asserted their pride against Israel, 
and set themselves up against the living God. 
The world will have their judgment from the liv- 
ing God, but it is not for me to condemn my 
neighbor, because he agrees not with me. I may 
try to bring him into the covenant of the Gospel 
by love, but I am never to condemn a man, be- 
cause I see him go over to the lust of the flesh 
and become a drunkard ; I am never to condemn 
those who are in the pride of life ; I must pass 
rapidly through them, and not stay to fight. 

The fourth form of temptation is the devil. 
The devil will never cease to tempt, but he 
tempts in a very different way and in a different 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



123 



sphere of our being from that of the world, or 
sin, or the flesh. All temptations come from Sa- 
tan, but he uses different media. Sin tempts as 
a taskmaster, the flesh tempts with allurements 
from within, and the world from without. The 
devil comes with his own special forms of temp- 
tation : in the two extremes of man's being, in 
his highest aspirations for good, or in his lower 
feelings of cowardly fear. The devil comes to us 
either with pride or with lies, to puff us up, or 
to terrify us. Notice how it is put before us in 
Ephesians vi., and you will see how to meet it. 
We are supposed to be in the heavenlies with 
Christ ; the devil is below in the air, and tries to 
draw us out of the heavenlies with two forms of 
temptation. He says to one Christian, "You 
claim to be in the heavenlies ; you ! do you think 
yourself fit to sit above all principalities and 
powers in Christ Jesus ! How dare you claim to 
be where the Son of God is in the presence of 
the Father ! ' ' He terrifies you out of your spir- 
itual life, until you become dejected and miser- 
able. We say that a Christian who gets into 
clouds of darkness within has lost his faith. He 
has been drawn from the heavenlies into the 
cloud of the wicked spirits that lie under the 
heavenlies. Christians, we were meant to be 
above the clouds, and to sit in heavenly places. 

The other forms of the devil's temptation is 
when he says, 6 ' You are in the heavenlies with 



124 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Christ Jesus ; you are one with, the Son of God ; 
you are a great man, a wonderful preacher, a 
splendid worker ; you are one with Christ ; you 
are in a position as lofty as the beloved Son of 
God can occupy." The devil persuades the 
man to think that he is a god. First he de- 
jected him until he was a devil in hell, then he 
exalted him until he was a god on the throne. 
You begin with cowardly terror of the old flesh- 
life and passions within you, then you rise to 
the world around yon, then to the heavenlies 
where you meet your temptation from dejection 
to exaltation. 

We are to meet these two temptations in ex- 
actly the same way. Say what St. Paul said to 
the Ephesians : "You that were dead in tres- 
passes and sins — children of wrath, vile, miserable, 
helpless worms, and deserving nothing but in- 
dignation — hath God exalted to his own right 
hand in heavenly places." You do not deserve 
it but there you are, so that pride and fear are 
both put away, when you recognize that you are 
in the heavenlies, strong in the Lord and in the 
power of his might. ' £ Put on the whole armor 
of God, that ye may be able to quench the fiery 
darts of the wicked one." You are saved from 
the attacks of the devil as long as you use the 
shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, 
the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the 
Spirit as Christ used them against the devil in 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 



125 



the wilderness. The devil is the only enemy we 
are told to fight. We are never told to light the 
flesh ; we are to give it the sentence of death. 
We are never told to fight the world ; we are to 
give it the go-by. Bnt we are told to fight the 
devil, because we are in the heavenlies, and he 
is trying to drag ns down. 

Look at the children of Israel. They were 
told never to fight until they came into Canaan. 
Amalek represents the hostile world that attacks 
you on your way to glory. You need not fight 
them, but need only grasp the rod of God's power 
and stand with both hands held up to Heaven, 
and Amalek is beaten. But in Canaan you have to 
fight with Anakim, giants, and cities walled up 
to heaven. The enemy fights, but down go the 
walls when the children of Israel shout the 
praises of God ; away goes the enemy when they 
use the sword of the Spirit ; down fall their foes, 
as soon as they really trust the Lord; there 
stands the sun ; he never goes down as long as 
you have a battle to fight ; you gain the victory 
when you use the sword and strength of the 
Lord. 

There is a beautiful thought in what the harlot 
Rahab said to the spies : "I know that the 
Lord hath given you the land, and that your 
terror has fallen upon us, and that all the in - 
habitants of the land faint because of you." 
That is the victory over our foes in the heaven- 



126 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



lies ; they have come to faint with fear because 
of us. The way is all ready for the victory, if 
you can only get your enemy to be afraid. 
Blessed be God, the devil hath become an arrant 
coward since Christ's death, if he never was be- 
fore, and we have to meet only a cowardly 
enemy. Those splendid fighting epistles of 
St. James and St. Peter, therefore, say, ' ' Resist 
the devil and he will flee from you." 

Lastly, consider death. St. Paul calls this the 
last enemy that is to be destroyed. It is only 
the fear of death that the Apostle speaks of in 
Hebrews ii. 15 : " Christ has delivered them who, 
through fear of death, were all their lifetime sub- 
ject to bondage." Again (II. Timothy i. 10) he 
says : ' 6 Christ hath abolished death, and hath 
brought life and immortality to light through 
the Gospel." Thus, when we think of death, we 
should say, "Thanks be to God, which giveth 
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
I have not been able to find anything in the his- 
tory of Israel with regard to the way we should 
deal with death, because Israel's history only 
carries us to the point of dying, and never takes 
us beyond the present life. Agag is the only 
one who, to my knowledge, pictures our true re- 
lation to death. He said, " Truly the bitterness 
of death is past. ' ' We are not now to look for 
death but for the coming of the Lord. There- 
fore, knowing that I am conqueror with Christ 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 127 



whatever befalls, I need only look into the face 
of Christ and think of those blessed words of 
Jesus, ' ' I am the resurrection and the life ; he 
that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believ- 
eth in me shall never die." I have, therefore, 
no need to fear death. 

Beloved, we have mighty enemies, but they 
have been taken so far away from us that we are 
^et free from their hand ; and now it is intended 
— and surely you wish to fulfill G-od's divine pur- 
pose — that you should serve him without fear, in 
holiness and righteousness before him all the 
days of your life, and in death, even forever 
and ever. Thanks be unto God for his unspeak- 
able gift. 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



" Moses verily was faithful in all his house* as a servant, for a 
testimony of those things which were to be spoken after." — Heb. 
in. 5. 

Moses, the great law-giver of Israel, was a serv- 
ant in a master's house, and in considering the 
subject of service I am not ashamed to call it 
slavery. It must be slavery of a particular 
kind, however. The word used concerning 
Moses is not the word for slave, as in many 
cases of others, and once of Moses in the New 
Testament where he is called a ' ' steward ' ' 
of the manifold grace of God. Remember, how- 
ever, that when the Bible was written, the stew- 
ard in the house of an Eastern prince was as 
much a slave as the lowest menial in the house- 
hold. He was a privileged slave, an interme- 
diary between the other slaves and his master, 
but he was an absolute slave, liable for any 
oifence to be castigated or destroyed. Eleazer 
was the steward of Abraham, and was perpetu- 



* " His house " means God's house, as it says in the sixth verse, " Christ as a 
Son over his own house, whose house are we." 



THE SEE VAX T OF GOD. 



129 



ally thinking of his master. In the twenty- 
fourth chapter of Genesis, he used no less than 
twenty-three times the expression, "My mas- 
ter." It is one of the most beautiful passages 
to display the true stewardship of the grace of 
God, and the privileges of the servant who is 
called to represent his master in the great mat- 
ters of life, more especially for those who are 
called to act as stewards in seeking a bride for 
the master's son. If we are called to be. any- 
thing as servants or slaves, it is that me may, 
like Eleazer, go forth into the world under the 
direction of our God, to seek a bride for our 
master, God's Son. 

In order to apprehend the reason why we are 
servants, if Ave are really servants, we must first 
recognize our position as creatures, creatures 
called into existence by the fiat of God, and 
therefore, like every other creation, absolutely 
subject to his sovereign will. The difference 
between us and a piece of clay in a field is that 
that clay obeys the Lord's will unconsciously, 
because it must ; we are to obey consciously, 
because we may. Because we are endowed with 
free-will and the glorious dignity of reason, it 
behooves us to be far more submissive to our 
Lord God than the clay. We should obey as 
absolutely, but with infinitely greater intelligence 
and joy, because we are called into existence 
for our Lord's own pleasure. What the elders 



130 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



cry before the throne (Rev. iv. 11), "For thy 
jDleasure they were and are created," applies 
to us exactly as much as to the angels in 
glory. 

If we are called into existence to fulfill God's 
holy will (Eph. i. 5), then that fulfillment should 
be absolute, and uninterrupted through all eter- 
nity. But although we recognize this duty we 
find that we are incompetent perfectly to fulfill 
that will, owing to the infirmity and corruption 
of our nature, and we, therefore, say that the thing 
cannot be, therefore it need not be, therefore it 
shall not be. So we acquiesce in the difficulties 
of our position, and bow before the temptations 
that assail us, and call them the ' ' infirmities of 
the flesh." Men and women calmly continue in 
their faults, which they know to be sins, but 
which they try to palliate by excuses or to expi- 
ate by pledges, and they scruple not to say, 
' ' Man must sin, then let him sin ; man must 
fall, then let him fall; God will be gracious; 
God will forgive, or what is the good of the Gos- 
pel? " We are practically saying, " God allowed 
me to be born with an infirmity that necessi- 
tates a fall ; then let him pardon me ; let him 
lower his standard to meet my necessities ; he 
dare not demand perfection because he knows 
that I cannot attain it." Away with such blas- 
phemies, my brethren, I beseech you. We are 
called to preach another Gospel. 



THE SEE VAST OF GOB. 



131 



The Salvation Army in their catechism say that 
perfection of life only means living up to the 
possibilities of an infirm nature, since God asks 
no more of his creature than that creature can 
perform : to do right in everything means simply 
to do what God would like me to do so far as my 
conscience tells me and my mind can understand. 
That is perfection ! That is making God nothing 
more than a superior creature like yourself. 
That sets no absolute standard toward which we 
are to advance, but every man's relative view 
becomes the true standard of perfection. God's 
perfection then varies according to the standard 
of each man's apprehension, and men take God 
to task if he demands more than they think that 
they can render. Away with such doctrines, and 
let us come to one standard, the absolute and 
perfect standard of God. 

Well do I remember the beautiful effect pro- 
duced upon my soul when a great philosophic 
leader of the Brahmo-Somaj spoke in Exeter 
Hall for the benefit of the Bible Society. He 
began by saying that he had studied thirty-three 
creeds to their depths, having given his life to 
the study of creeds to find which was the perfect 
one. He said that he never came to any satisfac- 
tion of soul or rest of mind or conscience until 
he opened the Christian Bible, and at the outset 

read. ' In the beginning. God " He said, 

6 ' There I stopped. That was enough for me, 



132 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



for in all the creeds of the East I had never yet 
met with one that portrayed a personal creator 
who, out of his own inherent power, called all 
things into existence. That was sufficient for 
me ; I felt : ' Here is the divine revelation. ' ' ' 

So I would say, that to every truly established 
Christian there ought to be a fixed standard of 
faith and duty, a great revelation from God of 
his privilege and obligation in every respect from 
the beginning to the end of eternity. We must 
put God to the front, and then remember that 
the standard of holiness which we are to attain 
must never be lowered to meet the necessity of 
man's circumstances, but must remain the same, 
the absolutely true and perfect standard of God 
himself. If God were ever to lower his stand- 
ard to meet man's requirements, there could never 
be satisfaction through eternity for us creatures, 
because we hope to rise higher and higher, to 
be nearer and nearer to God. If God lowered 
his standard of holiness to meet our ideas down 
here in our imperfection, how could we con- 
tinue to reverence him as the Absolute and All- 
perfect One? Therefore, a creature is called into 
existence to enjoy fellowship and union with 
God; to know God, until he becomes in some 
sense the representative of God. Should there not 
always be present to that creature's mind this 
one thought, " I am made for God, I am to rep- 
resent God to the things below me, I am to walk 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



133 



in oneness with God ; the ambition of my sonl is 
so to be the very reflector of God — that I become 
one with him, and yet remain a creature to the 
end of eternity ? " If that be the standard it is 
evident that something must be done to meet 
man's present circumstances and to bring them 
into accord with what God requires which is 
nothing less than perfection. Our Holiness is 
the extent to which we carry out that perfection. 
Hereafter, we know that we shall be perfectly 
holy ; but, must men content themselves with 
that hope while they are constantly falling here 
on earth? No. It is true that we shall always 
come short of the glory of God, but there need 
be no lowering of the standard of true holiness 
which consists in unceasing and perfect service, 
the carrying out of the will of God. 

How has God met the need of man who is 
manifestly an infirm creature tempted on every 
hand to do evil? After Adam's fall God gave 
him a promise, and for centuries men lived un- 
der the dispensation of that promise which, how- 
ever, failed to accomplish the salvation of all 
mankind. Then came the redemption from 
Egypt, and the giving of the law, and men lived 
under the redemption from bondage and in the 
possession of apparent fellowship with God ; but 
the requirements of the law were too high, and 
failed to save them. God next sent his Son, our 
Lord Jesus Christ, and u what the law could 



134 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, 
God sending his own Son in the likeness of sin- 
ful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh : 
that the righteousness of the law might be ful- 
filled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but 
after the Spirit. ' ' Thus we have a declaration on 
the part of God, that in Christ Jesus there is pro- 
vision made whereby weak and sinf ul man may 
rise far above the standard of the possibilities of 
the Old Testament, for Christ has given to man 
a power to fulfill the righteousness of the law, if 
he walks not after the flesh, but after the 
Spirit. We are, therefore, endowed above all 
others that ever lived before us, for we live in 
the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, which is an 
awful prerogative. Men talk lightly about the 
scheme of redemption, the blessings of salvation, 
and the glory of the believer's inheritance, and 
forget that it is not the glory of the inheritance 
to which the saints are to look forward, but as 
St. Paul says, " The glory of Christ's inheritance 
in the saints." It was said to Levi, " The Lord 
is your inheritance," but they were also the 
Lord's inheritance. It is said in the Church to- 
day, ' £ The Lord is our inheritance, ' ' but we are 
also the Lord's inheritance. We take of the full- 
ness of God, but we, the church, are also " the 
fullness of him that flllethallin all" (Eph. i. 23). 

It is only when men are forced to the conviction 
that God meant better things for them than they 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



135 



have known, that they seem driven to the conclu- 
sion that it is not with God that the responsibil- 
ity for man's failure rests, but in man's want of 
faith. If faith could only rise to its fullness of 
fruition, I believe that we should be perfected, as 
we shall be perfected when faith is lost in sight, 
and ' ' we shall be like him, because we see him 
as he is." 

Let us look at Moses as an example of one who 
was enabled to glorify God as a servant. It is in 
the idea of a slave, but different from Moses' slav- 
ery, that I wish to exhibit our highest privilege. 
The position of slave is the true position for 
us to occupy under the Gospel, and is a posi- 
tion of honor instead of one of degradation. 

It is a position of honor because Jesus Christ 
was pleased to take upon himself the form of a 
slave. We cannot become true children of God 
in all the glories of adoption and inheritance, 
until we become exactly like Christ. We must, 
therefore, go through the agony of death by a 
condition of slavery as the Master did. Conse- 
quently, St. Paul declares repeatedly that his 
highest dignity is to be the slave of Jesus Christ. 
He says to Timothy (II., ii.), "Thou, therefore, 
my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ 
Jesus" — and proceeds to trace out the charac- 
teristics of a true son of God. He says that 
when a man becomes a son, he becomes a soldier, 
an athlete, a husbandman, a part of the house- 



136 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



hold, a vessel, and lie closes by calling Timothy 
the servant of the Lord as being the highest dig- 
nity for the child of God. Thus, if we fulfill our 
•privileges as children of God, apparently the 
noblest of all our positions upon earth is in being 
SovXoi, slaves. We lose the idea of slavery 
when we think of perfect acquiescence in the 
will of God, and the joy of the presence of 
Christ. 

If this be the position of the true child of 
God, Christians are different from those who lived 
in the Old Testament dispensation in having as a 
starting-point sonship to God. We have a mo- 
tive power which they never had. Moses fell, but 
we may not therefore expect to fall, for we have a 
motive power that was lacking to even the noblest 
of God's Old Testament saints ; we have the in- 
dwelling power of the Holy Ghost, which gives 
us a new life, the very life of the Son of God. 
While the Old Testament believers were only 
expected to " keep the commandments of God," 
but the New Testament saints are " Icept by the 
power of God through faith unto salvation, 
ready to be revealed in the last day. ' ' 

Moses may serve us as a pattern of a true serv- 
ant of God even though he was a slave in an- 
other's house, while we are sons in a Father's 
house. We find in him a magnificent testimony 
to what you and I might be if we were only faith- 
fully yielded to our Lord as his children for 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



137 



enjoyment, and as servants for service according 
To Ms demand. It is very beautiful to study 
the picture of hini. traced in the book of He- 
brews, among what are called the " Heroes of 
Faith." TTe read first, " By faith, Closes, when 
he was born, was hid three months of his par- 
ents, because they saw he was a proper child; * 
and they were not afraid of the king's command- 
ment." It is a great blessing to be born of 
faithful parents. Moses* parents seem to have 
had some faith in God, since they were not 
afraid of the king's commandment. They seem 
also to have recognized in the child some divine 
call, and therefore determined to keep him 
alive. But the risk became too great, and at 
last they placed the child in the ark. which rep- 
resents in a sense the Lord Jesus Christ as the 
place of safety in the hoar of death and destruc- 
tion. From this ark the child was '' drawn out," 
and made the son of Pharaoh's daughter. From 
that moment Moses becomes the drawn-out one. 
He is taken from the place of destruction, and is 
committed to the care of his mother who rears 
him to have some knowledge of God. At length 
he is taken into the court of Pharaoh, and be- 
comes heir to the throne, with opportunities 
peculiarly great, and privileges that the world 



* Stephen uses the same expression (CLGTEi o$ ) concerning Moses in his speech 
before the High Priest when he says (Acts vii. 20), " In which time Moses was 
born, and was exceeding fair " (fair to God). 



138 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



would consider most remarkable and enviable. 
He is brought up in the midst of the world with 
all its allurements, all its difficulties, all its 
temptations, all its demands, and all its terrible 
pressures. When he has come to full age, and 
has the power of choosing, he is suddenly called 
upon to exercise his free will. There comes a 
time in every man's career when he must exer- 
cise his free will, or he cannot hope to become a 
faithful servant of God. 

The moment that Moses came to years of dis- 
cretion we read that he "refused to be called 
the son of Pharaoh's daughter." Take that as 
the starting-point of the life of service. If your 
circumstances are making it impossible for you 
to carry out what would otherwise be the will of 
God, then drop your circumstances as Moses 
did; it rests with you to do it. Refuse any 
longer to be called the son of Pharaoh's daugh- 
ter. You have been in the courts of men, you 
have stood high in the favor of the people of 
this world, and your heirship may look exceed- 
ingly brilliant. You must choose whether you 
will take the heavenly inheritance or the earthly. 
There comes a point in every man's history 
when, if he wishes to be a sanctified vessel, meat 
for the Master's use, he must decide to drop 
everything that prevents a holy career, and a 
life of perfect service among the people of the 
Lord. This is the starting-point of the life of 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



139 



true service, and it is vain to talk about Chris- 
tian privileges and Christian prospects as the 
lawful inheritance of every believer while you 
refuse to obey God's call to come out from 
Pharaoh's court. Americans say that they own 
no king. I wish that none of them did. King- 
Money, King Fashion, King Society, King Cir- 
cumstances rule millions of God's iDeople and 
keep them back from their holy calling, as the 
court of Pharaoh might have kept Moses from 
obeying the call of God. Brethren, if you have 
not already done so you must come to a solemn 
decision and say, "I, by the grace of God, re- 
fuse from this moment to be called the son of 
Pharaoh's daughter; " you must turn your back 
on the fashions, the customs, the honors of the 
world, and determinedly take your stand against 
that which keeps you from fully obeying the 
call of God. 

We see the next stage pictured in that Moses 
chose rather " to suffer affliction with the people 
of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a 
season.'' If you are Pharaoh's daughter's son 
by adoption, if the world has taken you into 
its bosom and has said, u Come, live with me and 
enjoy the pleasures that I have to offer," no one 
denies that it is very pleasant for a season. 
"Would the devil be what he is if he did not gild 
his bullets, and if he did not find something to 
boast of to offset the glorious attractions of 



140 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



heaven? Of course, Pharaoh's court with all its 
grandeur, its learning, its talent, its science, its 
magnificent prospects and possibilities and 
power attracts men, and they are drawn into its 
snare. The half and half man says, " See what 
I can do if I stay where I am. When I become 
king over Israel, see what I can do for God's 
people. " " Thou fool ! this night thy soul shall 
be required of thee, and then whose shall these 
things be?" "Who told you that the opportu- 
nity would be sufficient for the purpose, or that 
you would have strength to use it? The call of 
God is upon you, and you must first of all exer- 
cise your free will, and then you must have 
your heart stirred; you must be attracted by 
God's people in their present humiliation and 
distress. This weighs against the attractions of 
the world, because you see what is coming by 
trusting the Lord. It is not enough to say, " I 
am 'drawn out,' and I thank God for the ark 
that saved me from destruction in the river of 
death. I want no more, I am God's man." 
You must choose whether you will share the 
afflictions of God's people rather than enjoy the 
pleasures of sin for a season. The late Bishop 
Roland Hill, a witty Irishman, once said to me : 
' ' Brother Peploe, I long to preach to all London 
one sermon before I die." "What do you 
mean?" I asked. "I have only one sermon," 
he replied, "that I want to preach to all 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



141 



London, to Belgravia, and that part where fashion 
reigns." "What will be your text?" "The 
Pleasures of Sin for a Season/' he answered; 
' ' I would carry them through a London season, 
and show them the pleasures of sin for a London 
season." I once heard of a man who preached 
to a tremendous audience of the most fashion- 
able people in London, taking his text from the 
46th Psalm : "Be still and know that I am 
God." He said: " 4 Be still!' What a satire 
upon the world of fashion ! — Be still ! God says 
it to you people of fashionable society, and what 
do you do to be still? — rise with a jaded brow, 
a sickly tongue, and a weary stomach at twelve 
o'clock in the day, and go out to the Row,* and 
from the Bow to luncheon, from luncheon for a 
drive, from the drive to tea, from tea to dinner, 
from dinner to the theater, from the theater to 
the ball, and from the ball you come home at 
three o'clock in the morning sick, weary, broken- 
hearted and distressed; and God says to the 
weary world of fashion, £ Be still, and know that 
I am God.' My God, what a satire upon re- 
ligion ! ' ' 

The pleasure of sin may seem very great to 
you when you are young, but what will be the 
end? Who is the most successful in this world? 
Is it not the man who, at the outset of his 



* Rotten Row, the fashionable drive in Hyde Park. 



142 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



career, calculates what will be the most propitious 
method of speculation or action? Men like Pears, 
who spent £137,000 ($685,000) in advertisements 
of soap in one year, are generally the men who 
succeed the best, because they give up the pres- 
ent for the sake of the future. Why is it that 
men and women who desire to succeed in this 
world are considered wise if they make a sacri- 
fice now for the sake of the future, while the man 
of God alone is expected to make no sacrifice 
and no preparation in spiritual speculation, 
based upon good calculations of course, for the 
future? 

Moses refused first; there is the exercise of 
will. He chose ; there is the exercise of affec- 
tion ; he felt that it would be better to cast his 
lot with the people of God. Now he goes one 
step further and does what you and I must 
do: " Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater 
riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he had 
respect unto the recompense of the reward." I 
am not ashamed to calculate, and to be ambi- 
tious in the spiritual domain. Moses, the servant 
of God, calculated well, and he concluded that it 
would be better to endure the reproach of Christ 
than to have all the treasures of Egypt. Put 
the two side by side, the things of the world in 
one scale-pan, and the things of God in the other, 
and see which kicks the beam. Make your cal- 
culation and say deliberately, ' ' I esteem the 



THE SEE VANT OF GOD. 



143 



reproach of Christ greater riches than the treas- 
ures of the world.*' We never thought, perhaps, 
that Moses had anything to do with Christ. We 
read that Abraham saw Christ's day and was 
glad, and now we find that Moses, too, saw 
Christ's day. I humbly think that Moses saw 
Christ when he said (Deut. xviii. 15), " The Lord 
thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from 
the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me ; 
unto him ye shall hearken." He must also have 
seen Christ in the court of Pharaoh somewhere, 
for he actually could calculate everything, and 
say, ' ' This is better for me. ' ' You say it is 
selfish, but that matters not ; it is better for you 
and for the world, if you only will come to this 
conclusion, that the reproach of Christ is greater 
riches than all the treasures of Egypt. When a 
man has settled those three things, his will, his 
affection, and his reason, all bring him to the 
conclusion that he would better give up any- 
thing that hinders his soul, and join himself to 
the people of the Lord, and take the reproach of 
Christ. Then he is well started toward the glory 
of the future inheritance. 

Xow follow Moses, the servant of God, in the 
second stage of his life. When he has left the 
court of Pharaoh to join himself to the children 
of Israel, God mysteriously interferes and does not 
let him become a leader in his own strength. 
Many men think ' ' I will go back and be a leader, ' ' 



144 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



and Moses tried to avenge the children of Israel 
by his own power, and smote the Egyptian. God 
says to him, ' ' You retire ; none of that killing ; ' ' 
and sends him away for forty years. " By faith 
he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the 
king, for he endured, as seeing him who is invis- 
ible." It took forty years for Moses to have his 
eyes opened to see Him who is invisible. It may 
take a long time for you to be brought to see 
God as he may be seen by the pure in heart, the 
faithful in spirit, the holy in purpose, and the 
consecrated in life. Forty years God had to 
deal with Moses near Horeb, the mountain of 
God's holiness. Moses had to live there as a 
mere shepherd in the wilderness, that he might 
be taught in God's school. Men do not excel to- 
day, because, after their conversion, they do not 
go apart, like Moses and Paul, into Horeb or 
Arabia for a season. Young Christians must go 
into Arabia. Book learning will never make 
preachers. You must get away alone with God 
and his Holy Word, and let God speak to you 
until your eyes are opened. Then you will see 
the burning bush, the majesty of God, and it 
will make you take off your shoes, for you will 
see that the ground whereon you stand is holy. 
Then only will God call you to be a delivered 
man and a deliverer. 

After forty years of schooling by God, Moses 
still shrinks back from being a mere servant. 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



145 



111 seven ways lie sought to evade the holy 
call of God. It is one thing to go out and be 
alone with God, it is quite another thing to 
be willing to be the servant of others. When 
Moses, by faith has learned to endure, seeing 
Him who is invisible, only then does God call 
him to go down into Egypt, back into the world, 
the place of temx3tation and peril. He is fitted 
now. When God has truly consecrated him 
and has given him power both with the mouth 
and in spirit to utter the will and the purposes 
of God, God sends him into Egypt to announce 
to the children of Israel God's holy plan of 
salvation. 

Notice the plan of salvation which Moses was 
to announce. It is the only plan of salvation 
that is scorned to-day, it is the passover, the 
blood of the Lamb that must be put upon the 
doorpost, the redemption from God's wrath by 
a sacrifice, and then the feeding upon the Lamb 
which God has provided in order that the soul 
may be fitted for the journey that lies before 
it. This is the doctrine which we must preach 
as much as Moses had to preach it, that the 
people of Israel might be redeemed through 
God's hand, but through Moses' mouth — the 
doctrine of the paschal lamb. Whenever a man 
begins God's service among the degraded slaves 
who are held in bondage by Egypt, he must 
preach salvation obtained through God's right 



146 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



hand of power by blood, and by the feeding 
upon the lamb. Moses does this through faith. 
" Through faith, he kept the passover and the 
sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the 
first-born should touch them." Salvation is 
wont to lead to service and to service by which 
we seek to save. 

There is one step further. By faith Moses led 
them ''through the Red Sea as by dry land; 
which the Egyptians essaying to do, were 
drowned." This is the great way in which the 
man becomes the leader. First, he only preaches 
for himself and his neighbors, that they must use 
the lamb ; but when he has taught them the doc- 
trine of deliverance and salvation, then, in pass- 
ing through the Red Sea, which is the place of 
death, and coming out on the other side with the 
whole church of God, the man must be their 
leader. We who profess to serve God must be- 
come leaders to draw the people forward into 
true spiritual baj)tism out of the land of bond- 
age up to the Mount of God, and into the land 
of Canaan. And Moses should have led the 
people all the way into Canaan. 

See why Moses failed to be what we are intended 
to be — leaders into the good land. One sin in 
that wilderness life prevented Moses from tak- 
ing the people into the blessed land of possession 
and power — an awful sin, but only one. The' 
meekest man that ever lived lost his temper once, 



THE SEE VAX! OF GOD. 147 

because they provoked him so that he spake un- 
advisedly with his lips, and then he dared to 
strike the rock, which God had already told him 
once to strike, and only once. The law strikes 
Christ, who is our Eock. once, and the waters of 
life flow out of the rock : strike it again on ac- 
count of temper, and you crucify the Son of God 
afresh and put him to open shame. Moses by 
striking the rock a second time falsifies the 
types, and God therefore punishes him. Smit- 
ing twice brings sin upon the actor ; and for that 
act Moses was never admitted into Canaan. It is 
very touching to hear Moses pleading with God 
to be allowed to enter Canaan, until at last the 
Lord says. ' • It must suffice thee to see it from 
afar: speak no more. " As the representative of 
the law I suppose that God was obliged to deal 
solemnly, judiciously, even supernaturally with 
him. where he would not deal so with any other 
of his children or his servants. 

If you have taken Moses as the pattern of the 
way in which we should begin to be the servants 
of God. then calculate and decide whether or not 
Moses was a wise speculator in his choice: decide 
whether you would be wise in making the same 
choice. First you must become voluntary slaves : 
you must refuse to be called the son of Pha- 
raoh's daughter and must go out to the children 
of Israel : you must pass perhaps a third of your 
life with God, and then you may be called to lead 



148 ■ THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 

the people into the goodly land. Was Moses a 
wise speculator? He was obliged to give np home, 
family ties, pleasures, prospects, privileges, all 
connected with the earth and with human life. 

If ever a man on earth longed for a home in 
the earthly sense, I suppose that Moses did. For 
eighty years he was nothing but a wanderer — 
forty years caring for Jethro's sheep, and forty 
years in the wilderness with the people he was 
allowed to lead out of Egypt. Eighty out of the 
one hundred and twenty years of his life that man 
never had an earthly home. Now the ninetieth 
Psalm is called the Psalm of Moses, ' £ the prayer 
of Moses, the man of God." What does he say? 
" Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all 
generations." You have a home, but it may be 
burned to-night. You have a tabernacle which 
you think is very beautiful, but the wind or the 
Hood may crush it down. But take Moses' 
home. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling- 
place in all generations." The man is at home 
in the Lord ; he is like that man of whom we 
read ' ' His soul shall lodge in goodness ' ' (Psalm 
xxv. 13). Moses lodged in goodness — cheap 
lodging, well furnished, always ready, plenty 
of accommodations for all friends who may 
come in. The Lord will send you such servi- 
tors as you never dreamed of having to wait 
on you; they shall be angels. I suppose that 
Moses never lacked servants ; his soul lodged 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



149 



in goodness, and the Lord was his dwelling- 
place, though he was one of the humblest of 
men. You like the prospect, and you say. "I 
should like to be the blessed means of leading 
men to know the Lord, and being a deliverer for 
those who are in bondage, but I should have to 
give up so much." or you say. "I am. like 
Moses, an infirm man, I shall loose my temper. I 
shall never get into the land." Brethren, God 
is love, God is love. God kept Moses out of 
Canaan. Did he? Yes. in the flesh ; but did 
he always keep Moses out of Canaan? 

Fifteen hundred years after Moses lost the 
inheritance of the earthly Canaan, into which 
he had so longed to enter, four men from a vil- 
lage in Galilee are seen walking up a mountain- 
side one evening at sunset. When they reached 
the top of the mountain at midnight, suddenly a 
light from Heaven shines upon the face of one of 
their number, and he is illumined beyond any- 
thing man had ever seen or heard of : his gar- 
ments become whiter than any fuller on earth ever 
whitened them, and the glory of the Lord is seen 
around the four. The peasants of Galilee fall to 
the ground in amazement at the vision, and when 
they open their eyes, by the side of him who is 
so beautifully illumined they see two forms, one 
of whom is Moses, and the other Elias. Moses 
has at last entered into Canaan ; he is in the very 
land of God's promise, the land of possession and 



150 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



privilege, and lie may be said to occupy a posi- 
tion of dignity and honor above all men that ever 
lived, for he is cheering the Son of God in the 
face of his coming death as the Saviour of the 
world. O gracious, wonderful father, O ten- 
der friend to the fallen sinner, and yet a saint. 
When Moses pleaded, God said, ' ' No, it may 
not be, ' ' but 1500 years afterward he sends Moses 
into Canaan to comfort Immanuel, who would 
die for us sinners. Did Moses make a good cal- 
culation? Consider whether it is worth your 
while to be out and out for Christ, or whether 
you are going to be one of those miserable " half- 
and-half ers, " trying to hold on to your treas- 
ures and |)leasures of Egypt. 

A lady — and sometimes a man, too — says, " I 
cannot give them up," flashing her diamonds in 
the light. Men, what about your cigars and 
your drinks? What about your home comforts 
and your pleasures ? I do not say that diamonds 
are wicked ; God made them ; but those beauti- 
ful things in the palace of Egypt, though there 
may be nothing wicked in them, are an allure- 
ment of the flesh. You must choose. Will 
you esteem most the reproach of Christ and cal- 
culate for the future 1500 years hence? 

One step further. There is eternity, the ever- 
lasting home above, and the sea of glory before 
the throne of God. Of all that saints on earth 
have ever envied, I suppose that they have 



THE SERVANT OF GOD. 



151 



envied most those who fall with their harps be- 
fore God, and sing in the glory of his presence, 
' ' Holy, holy, holy." But, brethren, there is 
one man and only one who ever composed a song 
upon earth which we are told is to be sung in 
heaven by the redeemed and the glorified. We 
read in Revelation xv. 2: "I saw as it were a 
sea of glass, mingled with fire : and them that 
had gotten the victory over the beast, and over 
his image, and over his mark, and over the 
number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, 
having the harps of God. And they sing the 
song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song 
of the Lamb." Was he a good calculator? He 
makes one hymn, and it is sung before God in 
the fields of glory by all who have gained the 
victory here below as martyrs. 

Christian friends, are you and I drawn out, 
drawn out for God's purposes to be fulfilled? 
Choose ye whom ye will serve. God help you 
to say like Joshua, the typical fulfiller of the 
true Jesus' purposes, and the man that had to 
take Moses' place, because of Moses' one sin; 
say from the depths of your heart : ' ' With body, 
soul, and spirit all, £ As for me and my house, 
we will serve the Lord.' " 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



" Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse ; a bless- 
ing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I 
command you this day : and a curse, if ye will not obey the com- 
mandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside out of the way 
which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye 
have not known." — Deut. xi. 26-28. 

Some five hundred years after these words 
were spoken by Moses, the Lord God gave utter- 
ance through his prophet to a wondrous Psalm 
in which we read these words, ' ' To-day, if ye 
will hear his voice, harden not your hearts " 
(Psalms xcv. 7, 8). That Psalm teaches us that 
God could not give his people rest because they 
had not sufficient faith in him. In the third and 
fourth chapters of Hebrews which treat of the rest 
of God, we find the same cry going up, " To-day, 
if ye will hear his voice." In that fourth 
chapter of Hebrews, we are told that Jesus 
(Joshua) did not give the people full rest — a very 
remarkable sentence. It would appear at first 
sight as if that were a contradiction to the facts 
which are so frequently detailed in the earlier 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



153 



part of Israel's history, namely, that God did 
give the people rest through Joshua. I hope to 
show, however, that these doubts as to God's 
faithfulness or seeming contradictions have no 
foundation in fact. I desire now to point out 
clearly what ought to lie before you, and what 
ought not to lie before you, in your endeavor to 
enter God's land of possession and peace. If you 
will follow God's guidance, take the warnings 
given in the Old Testament Scriptures. 

Three great figures that stand out prominently 
in the history of Israel may be combined to sym- 
bolize the person of Jesus Christ — Moses, Aaron, 
and Joshua; Moses, as the great deliverer and 
lawgiver, resembling Jesus in his preliminary 
work for us ; Aaron as intermediary between 
God and man, representing in his high-priestly 
character the functions of Christ for the true be- 
liever in reference to God ; and Joshua, as ex- 
hibiting the great characteristics of our Lord 
as our leader, our conqueror, in whom we pre- 
vail at every point, and through whom we were 
intended to have all the blessings that God de- 
sires his people to enjoy upon earth. Moses is 
simply a type of Christ in his relation to one 
part of man's soul, Aaron in relation to another 
part, and Joshua in a third part, and each type 
needs to be expanded and exalted at every point. 

It is when Moses is dead, that Joshua comes 
to the front as the leader of Israel into the land 



154 THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 

of possession and of privilege. But before 
Moses is taken away, he speaks the remarkable 
words found in this eleventh chapter of Deuter- 
onomy. Seven times over in this chapter Moses, 
the type of Jesus our deliverer, our lawgiver, our 
instructor from God, says to the children of 
Israel, ' ' You are goiug into the land to possess 
it." It is no use going into the land, brethren, 
unless you are prepared to possess it afterwards. 
It is one thing for God to give you the land, it 
is another thing for you to go in and possess it. 
It is one thing for Moses to stand upon Mount 
Pisgah and look at the land, it is another thing 
for the people to go in and enjoy it. He 
yearned to enjoy it but he could not, simply 
because of that one sin. His experience is typ- 
ical of the fact that neither deliverer nor law- 
giver is sufficient for man's full salvation ; even 
the high priest is not sufficient, for he, too, died 
in the wilderness. To enter the land we must 
have a conqueror, the Captain of our salvation, 
to take us in. We must obey his command- 
ments which are the same as those of Moses. It 
will not suffice to acknowledge that there is a 
perfect law, and say that it is too holy for me. I 
must follow my Captain, and enter through him. 
The Captain brings us the same ten command- 
ments, the same revelation of the holiness of 
God, the same demands upon character and con- 
duct as Moses brought when he came down 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



155 



from Sinai with the tables of stone. We cannot 
escape from God if we wish victory and peace. 
We shall never go to heaven unless we are ready 
to live with God here on earth. Israel failed 
because they did not bow every faculty in con- 
tinual submission to God's holy commandments. 
They took spasmodically the revelation of God's * 
will and tried to live up to it for a few moments, 
but they went back to the carnal appetites of 
the flesh, and did not serve God all the days of 
their life. 

When the Lord Jesus Christ sent the Holy 
Ghost from heaven, he told the disciples that the 
Holy Spirit would come to convince (or con- 
vict) men of sin, of righteousness, and of judg- 
ment. I humbly believe that the convicting 
work of the Holy Ghost is as needful a prelude 
to the spiritual enjoyment of believers, as it is 
for the world at large before its peace is made 
with God through the blood of the Lamb. Be- 
fore the Holy Spirit can guide Christians into all 
♦ truth, he must come to them individually, and 
convict them in the sense that he tells them of 
whatever is still wrong in their lives, which 
keeps them from enjoying the full blessing of 
God. We are to pass judgment upon the god 
of this world — no longer the prince — as well as 
upon ourselves. Then the Holy Ghost will 
guide us into all truth, and make us able to 
enter the green pastures of God's love, the rich 



156 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



mountains of God's provision, and the grand 
cities which God has prepared for ns to inhabit 
and enjoy. My brother, " To-day, if ye will hear 
his voice, harden not your hearts." Pray God 
that you may not be kept from entering into 
the enjoyment of God's blessings because of un- 
belief. 

In the words which Moses speaks to the chil- 
dren of Israel just before he was taken from 
them, he speaks of "the days of heaven upon 
earth" (Deuteronomy xi. 21), as representing 
the enjoyment which Israel should know if they 
would only go in and possess the land, and obey 
the Lord. Pause now, as it were, at the gate of 
that land, on the east of Jordan, while the ark, 
having entered the stream of life — not death — 
stands waiting until all Israel shall have passed 
over and entered into the good land to take pos- 
session. The Red Sea, as the water of salt, typi- 
fies death ; the Jordan is a living stream rushing 
down from above, and we are waiting our turn 
to go through it, past the ark, into the good , 
land. Brethren, what are you expecting? Let 
us notice briefly what God intended that land of 
Canaan to be to his people. 

The Lord told Joshua of three things which 
the people should have when they crossed Jor- 
dan. First, he promised them the land, posses- 
sion, when he says (Joshua i. 2) : " Moses, my 
servant, is dead; now, therefore, arise, go over 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



157 



this Jordan, thou and all this people, unto the 
land which I do give to them, even to the chil- 
dren of Israel. Every place that the sole of your 
foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto 
you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness 
and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the 
river EuiDhrates, all the land of the Hittites, and 
unto the great sea toward the going down of the 
sun, shall be your coast. ' ' 

In the second place he promised them victory 
(verse 5), " There shall not any man be able to 
stand before thee all the days of thy life ; as I 
was with Moses, so I will be with thee ; I will 
not fail thee nor forsake thee. ' ' 

The third blessing promised was rest (verse 
15). " Until the Lord have given your brethren 
rest as he hath given you, and they also have 
possessed the land which the Lord your God 
giveth them : then ye shall return unto the land 
of your possession and enjoy it, which Moses, the 
Lord's servant, gave you on this side of Jordan, 
toward the sun rising." 

These three blessings sum up the life of holi- 
ness, the life of privilege, the life of power, the 
life of peace, to which the Lord calls you. From 
this day forth you are to know the perpetual 
enjoyment of a possession which opens out be- 
fore your soul's eye broader and grander every 
day. Our possession is the unsearchable riches 
of Christ. Secondly, you are to know unceasing 



158 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



victory, with never an enemy that shall conquer 
you again. As St. Paul says in the eighth of 
Romans, "In all these things we are more than 
conquerors through him that loved us." Thirdly, 
the rest and calm of soul, the enjoyment of spirit is 
never to be interrupted. You say, ' ' Impossible ! ' ' 
Then, my brethren, it will be impossible. Israel 
entered not in through unbelief, and you will 
fail through unbelief just in proportion as you 
doubt your God. 

Moses saw beforehand that the children of 
Israel were to have the opportunity to enjoy 
these privileges. He says, first (Deut. xi. 22-24), 
"If ye shall diligently keep all these command- 
ments, the Lord will drive out all these nations 
from before you, and ye shall possess greater 
nations and mightier than yourselves. Every 
place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread 
shall be yours ; from the wilderness and Leba- 
non, from the river, the river Euphrates, even 
unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be." 
Secondly, he says (verse 25), "There shall no 
man be able to stand before you ; for the Lord 
God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of 
you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon 
as he hath said unto you." And thirdly (xii. 9), 
he says, "Ye are not as yet come to the rest 
and to the inheritance which the Lord your God 
giveth you." Here again we have the threefold 
promise, the land, victory, and rest. 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



159 



The question for us is : Did this promise ever 
come to pass, and how far can we enjoy it? 
These same promises are given to Joshua (Joshua 
i.) as the blessings which he and his people 
should enjoy, so far as they trusted and obeyed 
the Lord, and later on in the history (Joshua 
xxi. 43-45), we find the remarkable statement : 
"And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land 
which he sware to give unto their fathers ; and 
they possessed it, and dwelt therein. And the 
Lord gave them rest round about, according to 
all that he sware unto their fathers : and there 
stood not a man of all their enemies before 
them ; the Lord delivered all their enemies into 
their hand. There failed not aught of any good 
thing which the Lord had spoken unto the 
house of Israel ; all came to pass." There again 
is land, rest, and victory. Then when Joshua is 
making his dying sxDeech to the peoi3le, he says 
(Joshua xxiii. 14): "Ye know . . , that 
not one thing hath failed of all the good things 
which the Lord your God sjDoke concerning 
you." * 

* Putting these statements from the twenty-first and twenty-third chapters 
side by side with the facts recorded in the other parts of Joshua and Judges, 
I should be tempted, at first, like the " higher critics " of the day, to see dis- 
crepancies between one passage and another, and to wonder if it does not 
prove that the book is a mere make-up from different writers, without any 
consideration of literary truth and literary justice, and therefore to be de- 
spised and thrown aside if we will. God says to Moses, '' Tell them they shall 
have the land from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean ; they shall have vic- 
tory over every enemy, and they shall have perfect rest with undisturbed 
enjoyment of the comfort of life." Joshua at the close of his life says, " You 



160 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Let us turn to the facts and see first of all, if 
the children of Israel ever did take possession of 
the land from the Mediterranean to the Eu- 
phrates. They have never possessed a fifth part 
of it to this day, though God promised Abraham 
that they should have it (Genesis xv. 18), promised 
Moses that they should have it (Deuteronomy 
xi. 23), and records the same promise in Joshua 
xxi. 4. Yet Joshua says that there has not one 
thing failed of all that was promised — land, vic- 
tory, and rest. What is the solution of the 
mystery? 

In the eleventh chapter of Joshua (16-23) we 
read : "So Joshua took all that land, the hills 
and all the south country and all the land of 
Goshen, and the valley, and the plain, and the 
mountain of Israel, and the valley of the same ; 
even from the mount Halak, that goeth up to 
Seir, even unto Baal-gad in the valley of Leb- 
anon under mount Hermon. . . . Joshua made war 
a long time with all those kings. There was not 
a city that made peace with the children of Is- 
rael, save the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon : 
all others they took in battle . . . that they 



have it all," and the historian says, " God gave them all these things — the 
land, rest, and victory over every enemy." Then I look at the contrary facts as 
the historian records them and say r Was the man a fool ? Did he know what 
he said ? He says that Moses told the children'of Israel that they should have 
these three things, that Joshua says they had them, and he himself adds as if 
to confirm Joshua's words, " You have them all," and yet he tells us that they 
never really enjoyed any of them. The explanation of the seeming discrep- 
ancy is, however, not difficult as we shall see. 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



161 



might have no favor, but that ne might destroy 

them, as the Lord commanded Moses. 

And the land rested from war." There are the 

same three things secured — land, victory, and 

rest. 

But have they taken all the land when Joshua 
speaks to them ? Look at xiii. 1. " Now, Joshua 
was old and stricken in years : and the Lord said 
unto him. thou art old and stricken in years, and 
there remaineth yet very much land to be pos- 
sessed/ 7 There is land yet to be possessed; 
what about the people? ; ' Nevertheless, the 
children of Israel expelled not the Greshurites, nor 
the Maachathites : but the Geshurites and the 
Maachathites dwell among the Israelites until 
this day'" (xiii. 13). Those are the very people 
who should have been destroyed. The land 
is not fully possessed, the people are not fully 
taken, and who can say they have rest when 
we read (Heb. iv. 9) that 1 ' Jesus (Joshua) did 
not give them rest?" 

Why, and how were they limited in the en- 
joyment of these promises? In the second 
chapter of Judges (ver. 7. 10) we see what hap- 
pened to those people, for "The people served 
the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days 
of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen 
all the great works of the Lord that he did for 
Israel. . . . There arose another generation 
after them which knew not the Lord, nor yet the 



162 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



works which he had done for Israel." Now we 
begin to see the explanation. God provided a 
Moses to bring Israel out of Egypt and to draw 
them to himself that they may be his people. God 
provided a Passover Lamb, the dying Saviour, to 
give you full deliverance, and you took it. The 
moment you claimed salvation God took you to 
Mount Sinai, and said, ' 'Will you take my will ? ' ' 
Some of you turned back to perish in the wilder- 
ness. It took Israel forty years to do what they 
might have done in eleven days. Through the 
high priest many of you have communion and 
fellowship with the Lord, and are rejoicing in 
the ever-living Joshua, our Jesus, who says, 6 ' I 
will take you in." God through Christ opens a 
land of privilege and says, ' ' Will you go in and 
possess it?" The moment you go in, instead of 
having to eat manna and to draw water from the 
rock, you find yourself in the possession of spir- 
itual riches and privileges that transcend the 
utmost of your expectation. Some have known 
what it was to jjossess a part of the land, but how 
much have you ? Only that on which the sole 
of your foot hath trod. You will never possess 
any more of Christ than you claim as your own. 
You do not gain God's blessing by storing away 
books full of notes ; you must take God's truth 
into your very soul, and feast upon it. What 
good will abundance of food, or water or money 
do you, if it is unclaimed and unused? The 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



163 



money that a man takes from the bank is his en- 
joyable possession, that which he has in the bank 
is only his lawful possession. Yon cannot pass 
throngh the riches of God except by the study 
of this blessed Book, and by constantly dealing 
with God in prayer. Yon mnst go as Abra- 
ham did upon the hill, and lift up your eyes 
and look northward and southward, and east- 
ward and westward, and hear the living God 
say, "As long as you are not joined unto the 
doubtful man Lot, as long as yon are not allied 
to the half -believer I give you the whole." Abra- 
ham enjoyed in Canaan every rod of land 
over which he walked. We read repeatedly in 
Genesis, that "The Canaanite and the Perizzite 
were then in the land" (xii. 7; xiii. 6). I used 
to be perplexed to know the meaning of that 
statement, but now I believe that I understand it. 
The Canaanite and the Perizzite were there as 
Abraham's enemy, to keep back his flocks 
and his herds from enjoying the pastures; but 
though they were in the land, Abraham walked 
through the length and breadth of it, and had 
free enjoyment of every camping ground at 
which he chose to stop, even though the 
Canaanite was there, because God was with him. 
The day is coming when the Jews shall possess 
that land, even to the Euphrates, and Israel 
must be saved and take possession. I honor the 
Rothschilds if, as I have heard, they said, that 



104 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



tliey would never buy Canaan, because it was 
already their own. Brethren, do not try to buy 
what God has given you. 

When I lived in Herefordshire, there was one 
very rich man in my parish, who had a sudden 
paralytic stroke while I was away from home for 
a holiday. He was a common ignorant farmer, 
and had come into eighty thousand pounds 
through the death of a brother. He had told 
me that he did not care for his brother's money, 
because he had as much as he wanted before, 
and yet he had not given more than sixpence a 
year for charity. As soon as I returned home I 
went down to see him and he said, 6 6 The Lord 
has stricken me and I am afraid I may die. I 
have sent for you at once that I may do what I 
suppose is right before God; I want to go to 
heaven, and I want you to take a hundred 
pounds for the poor. ' ' I looked him straight in 
the face, and said, ' ' Do you think you are going 
to bay your soul's way to glory by a dirty 
hundred pounds ! Give your money where you 
like, I will not touch it." That was rather 
strong ; but blessed be God, the man lived seven 
years, and was a very different man before he 
died. 

Take the land that God has given you. The 
Canaanites are there, but they cannot touch you. 
They always bowed down to Abraham and called 
him "my lord." Your enemies will do the same 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



165 



to you as long as you pnt your trust in God, and 
claim the riches of Christ. Claim a perpetually 
holy life that shall know no interruption ; claim 
power to carry out the character of Christ be- 
fore the world, and let them see that you have a 
glorious dignity, a holy privilege, and a mighty 
power. 

The children of Israel possessed just so much 
of that land as they put their foot upon and no 
more : therefore, when Joshua came to die he 
looked around and said. • • TTe have had great 
possessions given us from the Lord, but you 
must not rest here : there remaineth yet very 
much land to be possessed. ' ' It is the same with 
us. 

" Have you on the Lord believed ? 
Still there's more to follow." 

Yes. always more : the Lord is ready to give you 
mighty treasures in the land of privilege when 
you put your trust in him. 

The children of Israel were told in the second 
place that they should have victory over all their 
enemies. Was this ever completely fulfilled? 
Jericho's walls fell down, but a few days after 
ward miserable little Ai. with its twelve thousand 
people, was able to beat back all the tribes of Is- 
rael. There was an accursed thing in the canrp ! 
God cannot bless and give the victory so long as 
you allow one damnable thing in you. You ask 



166 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



''What is a damnable thing? I have my little 
infirmities, I am very fond of my little money- 
bag, my Babylonish garments, but what is the 
harm? " Brethren, there will be no victory 
while you set your heart on these accursed things. 
There is no harm in the Babylonish garment in 
itself, but it is stealing the heart and damning 
your soul. You must deal with Grod. If you 
set your hearts upon his commandments to keep 
them, then the Lord shall give you the victory ; 
but no more of victory than you have a clear con- 
science, and have offered yourself a whole-hearted 
sacrifice unto God. Stone the accursed thing and 
victory will be yours. " Up, wherefore liest thou 
thus upon thy face," there is an accursed thing 
in the camp. Israel took only a fifth of the land. 
How much did they conquer of the people ? One 
of the most pitiful arithmetical progressions I 
ever read is from the thirteenth chapter of Joshua 
through the book of Judges ; especially in the 
book of Judges where we read that they began 
to take the land piece by piece. Judah first let 
the Jebusites stay in Jerusalem ;" next, they 
could not drive them out; then the Jebusites 
drive the children of Israel out ; next, the chil- 
dren of Israel are in bondage and captivity to 
the very men whom they were to conquer ; and 
then comes that life of ups and downs, the very 
picture of the greater part of the Christian 
church to-day. The Israelites have only dark- 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



167 



nessand distress. God raises up an Othniel, and 
the land has peace for forty years. Then down 
they go again, and God raises np an Ehud, and 
they have x>eace for eighty years. Then there is 
bondage to Sisera and God gives them a Deb- 
orah. Here is a female vessel which is nsed of 
God. But down they go again, and so through- 
out the book of Judges you have the typical 
scene, the people of God in possession of the 
land with promised victory over every foe, but 
up and down, up and down, though we read 
of forty years' rest, and eighty years' rest, yet 
they are again brought into captivity under 
their enemies. Why? Because they never trust 
the Lord, because they never go forward, be- 
cause they are never loyal. Those are the 
people who say that they have all the land in 
possession, and are to have victory over every 
foe. 

Thirdly, the Lord promised them rest, and 
Joshua could say that the Lord had given them 
the land, and victory, and rest round about; 
but rest from how many of their enemies? 
They had conquered thirty-one kings, but there 
remained yet to be thorns in their side, many of 
the nations which they ought to have over- 
thrown. The land had no rest, because they 
never fully trusted the Lord their God. That is 
the case with multitudes to-day who call them- 
selves Christians. The Lord never broke his word. 



168 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Israel had all the privileges that they could 
take ; so you will have. When I see a man or 
woman excited at a conference and saying, 
' ' This is delightful, this is heavenly, this is 
grand; do just give me a text." Well, thank 
God, if a text helps you, but you will never get 
any more than you put your foot upon and claim 
of this Bible. Do you suppose because a man 
dishes up a few of God's truths for you by the 
teaching of the Holy Ghost, that you have the 
whole of the land? Brethren, we only give 
you a key; go in and you will have all the 
pomegranates, and all the corn, and grapes, 
and the treasures of Jbrass, iron, and stone for 
your own; but you must walk for them.* You 
must walk all through the land and take posses- 
sion of it, then you must drive out your ene- 
mies. What did St. Paul mean when he said to 
the Ephesians, " Let not, let not, let not?" 
That one expression goes all through the pas- 
sage. In the sixth chapter he tells us that there 
are enemies who are seeking to drive us out, to 
bind God's people in their own land; the 
old enemies will rise up against you, who have 
taken their land, and they mean to take it away 
from you, and they will unless you have the 
grace of God to go forward courageously and 
fight the good fight of faith. When a soldier is 



*So in the Epistle to the Ephesians the Apostle mentions the seven walks of 
the Christian. 



THE FAITHFUL LORD. 



169 



placed upon guard he has to be more watchful 
than at any other time. It may be in darkness, 
and yet he has to be alive and earnest. You 
cannot claim these blessings which the Lord is 
prepared to give, except in the measure in which 
you are found both treading upon the land 
which God offers you, and watching and using 
the whole armor of God. 

How far may rest be had? Just so far as I 
have perfect confidence in God. There is a dif- 
ference between faith and faithfulness. Faith 
takes, and faithfulness carries out God's bless- 
ings in the individual's experience. I must be 
faithful unto death, if I am to have the crown 
of life. The Lord is asking us to trust him one 
step at a time, one moment at a time. The life 
we profess to live is a life of holy rest, a life 
filled instantaneously with all the grand possi- 
bilities which God offers in himself. 

Israel have failed up to this very day because 
of their unbelief. Joshua says, c £ Not one thing 
hath failed of all that God promised, ' ' and that is 
true up to the extent that the people had carried 
out the commands and counsels of the living 
God. As far as you trust God you will find 
that he is giving you perpetual victory and 
enjoyment. The promise is as full as it can be 
even from the living God. The possession and 
enjoyment and power are full only so far as you 
trust him. There comes into your heart, perhaps, 



170 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



a sense of shame, and, I hope, a willingness 
to confess that yon have known so little, en- 
joyed so little, been victorions so little, and rested 
so little in the Lord in the days that are gone 
by. Christ is all in all for every need of man. 
Thanks be nnto God for his unspeakable gift ; I 
have Christ, and shall not Christ have me? 
When people say, "I want more of the Holy 
Ghost," I answer, u The Holy Ghost wants 
more of yon." The question is not, How much 
you can take in of the Spirit, but how much the 
Spirit can take possession of you. If you will 
yield yourself to the living God with the convic- 
tion that he is all that every man can want ; not 
one good thing shall fail, any more than it has 
failed in the past, of all that the Lord our God 
hath promised. 



STAND FAST. 



" Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, my 
joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved." — Phil, 
iv. 1. 

Holiness must be carefully distinguished from 
righteousness. They are closely allied, for one 
is the fruit of the other; yet holiness is not 
really greater than righteousness, nor is right- 
eousness greater than holiness. I think, how- 
ever, that we are justified in speaking of holiness 
as a great advance upon righteousness in the 
sense that holiness must be the offspring of 
righteousness, and since no man can know what 
holiness is until by God's grace he is made par- 
taker of "the righteousness of God, which is 
by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all 
them that believe." Righteousness, says Dr. 
Horatius Bonar, * is legal perfection ; holiness is 
spiritual character. Holiness is an advance 
upon righteousness, f for righteousness is de- 

* God's Way of Holiness. 

f If this be true, it may puzzle some that we should read (Luke i. 74-75) that 
we are to be delivered from the hand ofiour enemies, that we may " serve him 
in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life." There holi- 
ness is placed before righteousness, but this word for holiness is 0(5zor?/S, 



172 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



clared to be a gift ; while holiness is the mani- 
festation of that righteousness in the life. "We 
have no. part whatever in obtaining the gift, but 
holiness is dependent upon the extent to which 
we accept Him who brings us righteousness, as a 
gift from God. No man will ever be made holy, 
as God requires that we should be holy, who has 
not gratefully accepted the gift from God, the 
gift which means to us perfect acquittal and 
perfect acceptance through the righteousness 
which God has provided in Christ. Remember 
that your acceptance before God depends in no 
sense whatever upon your own conduct or char- 
acter. But also remember that for your fellowship 
with God and your final fruition in glory, every- 
thing depends upon your own character and con- 
duct. While righteousness is a free gift to them 
that are utterly undeserving, holiness is the 
working out of that which God bestows, so that 
the credit must always be his in both cases. 

The gift of righteousness then is Christ Jesus, 
the Lord, taking my place as a sinner, and giv- 
ing me his place, as a saint. We are, therefore, 
accepted in the Beloved without credit, without 
effort of any kind ; simply because by faith we 



whereas elsewhere, when we are enjoined to be holy, the word is ayiodjll6<;, 
CLyiOTrjC,, ot ayiGo6vv?/, the fruit. In Luke i. 74-75, we are simply 
called upon to be dedicated to God, and therefore are to be made righteous 
in our life, so that the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us who 
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The holiness generally spoken ot 
is the fruit of righteousness (Rom. vi. 22). 



5r.-i.VD FAST. 



173 



take what God bestows. Holiness, on the other 
hand, is won by the goodness of God. Christ 
reveals himself through the Holy Ghost, and 
deigns to work in me to enable me to do what 
God desires. The one is wrought for me, the 
other is wrought in me. Righteousness makes the 
vessel meat, holiness exhibits the extent to which 
it is used by the Lord himself. There must then 
not be righteousness only, but there must be ho- 
liness in every Christian man and woman be- 
cause God demands it. 

I wonder not that the scorning skeptic so often 
mocks at the Christian, because he says that they 
cowardly cringe at the foot of the cross, ready to 
take God's gift like a sneak, but show nothing 
as a fruit of that blessed gift. Remember that 
God demands, and where God demands he en- 
ables, and where God enables, he expects us to 
fulfill. 

The Apostle Paul has been exhibiting this 
truth to the Christians at Philippi through the 
first three chapters of his Epistle. The Philip - 
pian Epistle differs much from the Ephesian 
Epistle, and from the Colossian Epistle, al- 
though all three were written during St. Paul's 
imprisonment at Rome. The Ephesian Epistle 
shows us what we are to God in Christ Jesus, 
and the Colossian Epistle what Christ is to us 
in the presence of God. But in the Philip- 
pian Epistle the Apostle speaks of what we 



174 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



should be for God in the midst of our fellow- 
men, and what Christ is to be to us down here in 
our own every -day Hfe with its duties, difficul- 
ties, temptations, and trials. God expects great 
things of us, brethren ; the world and the devil 
expect great things of us. The devil is watch- 
ing to see what the grace of God can do in the 
Church, and the devil's one design is to over- 
throw and defeat the grand purposes of God 
with regard to His redeemed ones. The great 
work of the world is to scorn the Christian if they 
can. The great work of God is to bring about 
such fruit of holiness in the Christian church 
that while the world hates, and the devil abhors, 
both shall be compelled to marvel at the won- 
drous workings of God. 

Are you prepared to let the works of God be 
carried out in you? To be a perfect astonish- 
ment to both the good and the evil principalities 
and powers in the heavenlies? St. Paul says 
that we are saved to be the manifestation of the 
manifold wisdom of God to all those wondrous 
beings above. 

The Apostle is calling upon the Philippians to 
exhibit Christ in their daily life, and at the 
beginning of the fourth chapter he has just solved 
his own problem with regard to the church of 
God, and its provision, and he now" writes that 
one word which is the turning point from the 
doctrinal to the experimental in nearly every 



STAND FAST. 



175 



one of his Epistles, and lie says, "Therefore, my 
brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, my joy 
and crown, so steadfast in the Lord, my dearly 
beloved. " 

"Therefore," why? Because of the provis- 
ion of righteousness in Christ spoken of in the 
third chapter; because of that humiliation of 
Christ which brought salvation, spoken of in the 
second chapter ; because of that glorious comfort 
and love which is in Christ Jesus, spoken of 
originally in the first chapter. 

Thus we see first (chapter iii.), that St. Paul 
puts himself forward as an illustration of what 
Christ would do in providing a righteousness for 
which they aspire ; and this aspiration, which 
was to him an obligation, lifted the Apostle to 
the one insatiable ambition, to be conformed to 
the image of Christ, his glorious Saviour and 
perfect example ; to come close to Christ, his 
beloved friend; to be accepted of Christ in the 
day of reward. He was looking forward to 
obtaining crowns, as a runner in the race, and 
he writes to those Philipxnans whom he loved, 
and says, " O ye Philippians, be my crown ! " 

I think that the minister of the Gospel is sep- 
arated to be a winner of crowns. I cannot tell 
how God gives power to the poor weak body and 
the feeble mind, and the helpless soul, but then 
I think that it is all by his grace, by his love, 
that he gives, as it were, an impulse to the soul 



176 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



which enables the body and strengthens even 
the mind ; because one looks forward to that 
blessed day when the people to whom one has 
ministered will be one's own crown. Do you 
not think that that gives support in the hour of 
weakness, and failure, and depression ? Oh, try 
it, try it, you Christians who have never yet won a 
soul to hand up as a jewel in the crown the Lord 
is going to give you ; try what it is to see the 
bright joy, to hear the redeemed one sing, to 
realize that God for Christ's sake has accepted 
him as a saved one. 

But St. Paul also says to the Philippians (ii. 1, 
2), " If there is any comfort, any power in Christ, 
O beloved , 'fulfill ye my joy, that ye be like- 
minded ; ' " that ye carry on the same blessed 
privileges which I have had, seeking for souls and 
serving the Lord. In the first chapter he says 
that he can think of them perpetually with joy, 
remembering them always in his prayers ; he 
understands their loving and faithful and holy 
life, and he blesses God that it is given to them 
as to him to suffer for Christ as well as to believe 
on him. 

The epistle begins with exhortations to holi- 
ness, and St. Paul comes back to that again in 
the beginning of the fourth chapter, and says 
that he cannot be content either for himself or 
for his beloved that there should be nothing but 
the gift of righteousness. It is a blessed gift, a 



STAND FAST. 



177 



glorious gift, and the starting-point of every- 
thing that is perfect in man, but it is not suffi- 
cient that you should be accepted in the" right- 
eousness of Christ Jesus; God Almighty has 
been pleased to redeem you, that you may win 
Christ in all his fullness. 

Listen to this appeal from the throne and 
from the cross ; an appeal from the cross that 
says to the sinner, take the gift and bless God 
with your whole being; then speaks from the 
throne and says to the saint, take the perfect 
work, ye that have been redeemed and are sanc- 
tified, and set apart for the Master's glory. 
You will never be satisfied until by the grace 
of God you are enabled to show that Jesus 
Christ can keep his saints standing fast in the 
Lord. 

We must recognize at the outset that every- 
thing depends upon being ' ' in the Lord ' ' — an 
old and familiar, but a beautiful truth that 
every saint of God delights to dwell upon. It 
would be wearisome if I were to pass through 
even this one Epistle and show how frequently 
St. Paul uses that one little preposition "in." 
I will only call attention to how repeatedly the 
Apostle brings this forward in chapter four as 
indicating not merely the sphere in which we 
are saved, or our place of blessing in the heaven- 
lies, but as the seed from which holiness springs. 
By holiness I do not mean merely " set apart" 



178 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



for God, as I understand the word in Lnke i. 
75, but a process carried on by God the Holy 
Ghost, through which I am being changed from 
glory to glory, into the image of Christ. 
Through holiness I am being satisfied moment 
by moment, comforted in trial, enabled in my 
dealings with my neighbor, not to be subject to 
bitterness, wrath, clamor, or evil speaking, how- 
ever provoking the circumstances of life may be. 
By holiness, in fact, I understand that beautiful 
land of Canaan, into which God introduces the 
true believer, and where he gives him possession, 
and power, and peace; possession, so that he 
has all things (I. Corinthians iii. 22) ; power, so 
that he can meet every difficulty and every duty, 
be more than conqueror through Christ (Romans 
viii. 37); and peace, not only with God, but 
having the peace of God ruling uninterruptedly 
in his heart (Colossians iii. 15). 

' £ In Christ, ' ' then, is not a mere position of 
safety, but is a condition from which springs the 
power for carrying out God's demand for holi- 
ness. Eight times in this fourth chapter (verses 
1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, 19 and 21) does the Apostle 
bring out this blessed truth that in Christ Jesus 
the Lord, there is marvelous power for all who 
really desire to stand fast, because of their hav- 
ing received the Son's provisions for holiness. 
(1) "Standfast in the Lord:' (2) " I beseech 
Euodias, and beseech Syntyche that they be 



STAXD FAST. 



179 



of the same mind in the Lord." (3) " Rejoice 
in the Lord always; and again I say, Rejoice.*' 
In the beginning of the third chapter he wrote : 
Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord." It 
seems as if he conld not get over the occasion for 
rejoicing, yet this man was writing from prison 
as Paul the aged, now the prisoner of the Lord, 
expecting martyrdom at any moment : yet, not 
less than sixteen times does the man speak in 
this one little Epistle about joy. Wherein is 
St. Paul different from you and me in possibilities ? 
Eleven times in the Epistle he brings out the 
words to avTo cppovetv. "to be of the same 
mind,'* as if that was the exultation that springs 
from the gift of joy. He says, ''My beloved 
brethren, you must have this mind, and if you 
take the gift and gain the blessing of rejoicing 
in the Lord always, you will then have the mind 
that was in Christ Jesus. When joy seems an 
impossibility to you. it is because you have not 
learned that mind. Our blessed Master never to 
our knowledge spoke of joy until the agony of 
death was upon him. Is not that wonderful? 
True, it is said that he "rejoiced in spirit" 
Luke x. 21) 3 but it was not until the night be- 
fore he died when he began to feel the agonies of 
death that Jesus began to speak of joy. What 
a lesson to us ! The very times when we 
are overwhelmed with affliction and trial and 
the burdens of life, are the times when the 



180 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Gospel of Christ was meant to bring us joy 
unspeakable and full of glory. 

Again (verse 7) Paul says (4) ' c The peace of 
God . . . sliall keep your hearts and minds 
in Christ Jesus;" and (5) " I rejoiced in the 
Lord greatly that now at the last your care of 
me hath nourished again " (verse 10). Fancy a 
man rejoicing in the Lord because he has just 
received a bit of money from the Philippian 
church. People sometimes think that they can- 
not give any pleasure to the great men of God. 
A little gift goes a long way, if the heart goes 
with the gift. (6) 66 1 can do all things in 
Christ who strengthened me" (verse 13). Can 
you take up those words and say, "I am all- 
prevailing in Him that strengtheneth me." (7) 
' ' My God shall supply all your need according 
to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus ' ' (verse 
19). St. Paul cannot get over the fact that he 
has such a Lord to provide for him. Then he 
seems to say (8) "Now let everyone take the 
blessing — ' Salute every saint in Christ Jesus ' " 
(verse 21). 

This is not a mere tricky repetition of a num- 
ber of verses. They show that a man in much 
darker circumstances than you are could still 
look into the face of the Lord Jesus, and recog- 
nize that Christ Jesus was looking into his face, 
and could say, ' ' I have all and abound ; every- 
thing is mine, and everything is yours in Christ 



STAND FAST. 



181 



Jesus." Never forget that while you have 
righteousness in Christ Jesus you have also a 
glorious tower. ;, The name of the Lord is a 
strong tower : the righteous runneth into it and 
is safe." Why does the Psalmist so frequently 
speak of the Lord as a rock, a fortress? It is 
because he says. " There my strength is supplied 
in abundance." Everything that is required 
by the soul is found in Christ Jesus. When 
we are in Christ Jesus, there comes the power of 
the Holy Ghost which works through us to ener- 
gize us for the glory of God. 

Xow it is that the Apostle can say. " So stand 
fast in the Lord. " I think that that word *• so " 
refers, first, to the provisions of God in Christ 
as our source of strength, and. secondly, refers 
to St. Paul as an example of steadfastness. 
Perhaps Christ would seem too high a standard, 
but surely all can be something like Paul, the 
aged, the prisoner at Eome (cf. i. 30. iii. 17, 
and iv. 9). He names Christ as the fountain. 
Paul as a pattern, the Holy Ghost as the power, 
and man as the medium. 

Now, rake your privilege, and no longer dare 
to vilify Christ in the eyes of the world by say- 
ing. "I cannot." Xo one ever said you could. 
Take your prepared place, and say once for all, 
\- 1 cannot; but Christ can." As one young 
man said, " Formerly, my highest wish was to be 
a manly Christian : now. I have come to desire to 



182 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



be a Christly man, a man taken possession of by 
Christ." It is true that you take possession of 
Christ here for acceptance and salvation, but to 
win a crown, Christ must take possession of you. 

Two little boys are walking along the road 
with their father. One grasps hold of his 
father's fingers, and finds that it is about all 
that he can manage. The other puts his hand 
right into his father's large strong hand, and the 
father holds it. Suddenly they come to a ditch 
in the road. Both slip : the one who is holding 
his father's hand loses his grip and goes down ; 
the other is held up firmly by the father's strong 
grasp. You do the trusting, and let God do the 
keeping, and you will go safe through life and 
enter into glory. "Kept by the power of God 
through faith unto salvation" (Peter i. 5). Let 
that be your law of life in everything. 

Brethren, we have our possession in the Lord, 
and we have our power and pattern in the Word. 
The life that we are to live as Christians is ex- 
pressed in these words 6 4 Stand fast ' ' (rrfKere, 
stand)! Let me call your attention to seven pas- 
sages from God's Holy Word which show what 
will be our life if we stand fast in the Lord. The 
first is I. Corinthians xvi. 13, "Watch ye, stand 
fast in the faith. ' ' Let no man shake your faith 
in the great doctrines of the Gospel. Be per- 
fectly clear as to the scheme of salvation, that 
doctrine of the blood, that doctrine of the atone- 



STAND FAST. 



183 



ment, that doctrine of burial by baptism, the doc- 
trine of the resurrection in Christ, the doctrine of 
the Holy Ghost coming to take possession and 
make you most powerful, the doctrine of salva- 
tion, satisfaction, and sanctification. Critics, 
however, will never get so high as the top of 
Christ's spire, the top-stone of which is geace. It 
is the spire that touches God's throne from 
which the grace of God flows to the very bottom 
of the building. 

Again (Galatians v. 1), ' £ Stand fast in the 
liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be 
not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." 
Do not be entangled again with bonds, either of 
the critics or of the poor superstitious ceremo- 
nialists. Stand fast in Christ's liberty. Ye .are 
the sons of God, taught by the Spirit to cry, 
' ' Abba, Father. " If I have liberty to go into 
my Father's own sanctum, and to speak to him 
of my affairs, and get money, counsel, strength, 
and wisdom, need I go into the bondage of super- 
stition and bow down to a human priest with my 
confessions? But liberty means not only liberty 
from superstition and ceremonialism, but liberty 
from the corruption of the flesh, for we are to 
walk in the spirit and not to fulfill the lusts of 
the flesh. 

Then, thirdly (Ephesians vi. 11-14), "Put on 
the whole armor of God that ye may be able to 
stand against the wiles of the devil. For we 



184 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



wrestle not against flesh and blood, bnt against 
principalities, against powers, against the rnlers 
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual 
wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto 
you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able 
to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, 
to stand." — " Stand fast therefore" in all the 
armor of God. We are in the heavenlies to fight 
the devils and all the principalities and powers, 
who are trying to draw us out from our fortress 
where God has placed us. There can be no peace 
between us and the devil ; we must fight him to 
the very end, because he is always assailing 
our souls and trying to draw us out of our high 
place in Christ Jesus. From the pit of darkness 
to the throne of God, Christ Jesus raises us, 
and putting us above all principalities and pow- 
ers, says, ' ' Having done all, stand. ' ' But mind 
that you take the whole armor of God; omit 
not one piece. The devil is crafty ; let him see 
one spot without its covering, and he will hurl a 
fiery dart that will make you groan with pain, 
and would wound you unto death perhaps, were 
it not for the oil and wine which the Good Samar- 
itan deigns to pour in. 

Once again Paul says to the Philippians (i. 27) 
that he desires to hear that they ' ' stand fast in 
one spirit." Brethren, we should be in one 
spirit only, not magnifying "isms" and cults. 
We are in Christ, and blessed be God, the day 



5r.-i.VD FAST. 



185 



is coming when the little distinctions will be 
dropped. 

There is a familiar story about John "Wesley 
and others going To the river that bounds the 
Holy City, and finding to their astonishment 
that they had to drop their cloaks and garments 
in which they approached. One drops his cloak, 
another his robe, another his surplice, and they 
come out on the other side astonished to find 
that they are all in the same white beautiful 
robe, the robe of righteousness, which is Christ 
Jesus our Lord. Cannot we gain a little more 
of heaven upon earth by stretching out more of 
the right hand of fellowship? " Stand fast in 
one spirit, with one mind." 

The next step is a very serious one. We are 
told that Epaphras was continually praying for 
the Colossians that they should "stand fast, 
perfect and complete in all the will of God" 
(Colossians iv. 12). We bow down and say, 
' £ Thy will be done ; ' ' and men put up the 
whites of their eyes and roll their heads about 
as if with agony at the thought that the will of 
God is to be done. One would think the will of 
God was the most terrible infliction that the 
Almighty could lay upon his creatures. But 
the will of God is the joy of Christ Jesus. It is 
the one joy of a sanctified soul that it is per- 
mitted and enabled to do the will of God ; so 
that when a person prays for me that I may 



186 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



' ' stand fast, perfect and complete in all the will 
of God," it is the most blessed prayer that can 
be offered for me. 

Now II. Thessalonians ii. 15 : "Standfast 
therefore in the traditions which we have 
learned, whether by word or by onr Epistle." 
Traditions? Certainly not what are called the 
traditions of Rome, bnt the teachings of the 
apostles, the "Word of God. Stand fast in the 
Word of God. When men tempt yon to turn 
aside into the pleasant pastures of what they 
call criticism; when they evoke scientific dis- 
play and seek to reconcile science and theol- 
ogy by dabbling with both and retaining them 
both, turn to the Word of God and say, "The 
Word of God is revealed to me in order that I 
may stand fast in it, and that is sufficient for 
me." 

Once more I. Peter v. 12 : " Testifying that 
this is the true grace of God wherein ye stand" 
This is the true grace of God; stand ye fast 
therein. As at the beginning, so at the close of 
our beautiful chain with seven links, we are 
brought back to that word grace. Never be 
moved from the grace of God ; let that grace pre- 
vail. St. Paul says to the Corinthian church 
(II. Cor. vi. 1). "We beseech you, therefore, 
that ye receive not the grace of God in vain ' ' 
(cf. viii. 9, ix. 9, xii. 9). Beloved, receive not the 
grace of God in vain. Your privilege is to stand 



STAND FAST. 



187 



fast in the Lord, and that position brings power 
not in ourselves, but in the Holy Ghost, so that 
whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, 
we may do it heartily (out of our souls) unto the 
Lord. 

It is a beautiful life — standing fast in the faith, 
standing fast in the liberty, standing fast in the 
heavenlies, girt in the armor of God, standing 
fast in one spirit, standing fast in the will of 
God, standing fast in the traditions of the Word 
of God's revelation, and standing fast in the 
grace of God. Surely we cannot ask more, for 
these seven things comprise every rjossible want 
that can rise in our hearts and they are all sup- 
plied in Christ Jesus. 

Twenty-one years ago I was permitted to con- 
duct a ten-day Mission in a small town in England. 
It was the first which I had ever conducted, and 
the Lord was pleased to give abundant blessing. 
A little governess, a small, delicate, retiring 
young woman, came to know God and to rest in 
Christ, and when I came to London two years 
later she had just taken the position of governess 
in a large house which had a very large drinking 
saloon attached to it, so large that the proprietor 
paid eleven thousand pounds for the good-will 
beside six hundred pounds a year for the rent, 
simply to supply drink in the saloon, while his 
family occupied the upper floor. As soon as she 
heard that I was in the city she said to the people 



188 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



of the house, £ ' You must go and hear that man ; 
he is a great friend of mine. ' ' She brought them 
to my church. The man was an infidel, but 
claimed to be an atheist.* He came to the 
church once, and that was enough for him ; but 
his wife came, his daughters came, and to-day, 
after sixteen years, that woman and her children 
are some of my most devoted adherents. 

The man turned away, but, after about a year, 
he was taken with a fearful attack of cancer in 
the bowels, and they said that he would cer- 
tainly die. The governess persuaded the wife to 
send for me. I went to see the man, but had 
very little effect upon him the first day. I went 
the second day and the third, as I saw by the 
open blinds that he was not yet dead. At last, 
when I could not persuade him of the goodness 
of God by any doctrine, I told him this story. 
I said, ■ ' My friend, God wants you to take 
Jesus Christ as your Saviour to-day, and simply 
to say 4 Thank you ' for it. ' ' He said, ' ' I can- 
not see that, and I don't see anything in the 
Gospel." He tried to listen, though he called 
himself an atheist. I said : "It reminds me of 
a story which I heard in Scotland. A gentle- 
man was driving to see a large and beautiful 

* Remember the difference between these : the skeptic is a man who is look- 
ing around ; the infidel has no faith in Christj the atheist is one without 
God. The skeptics are usually earnest people ; infidels are fools perhaps, poor 
things; but atheists are rank fools, because they say that there is no God, 
when they know that there is. 



STAXD FAST. 



189 



palace, and when they stopped at the gates, he 
looked out of the carriage, and said to the driver, 
' Drive on. ' The driver answered, ' This is what 
we have come to see. ' ' Go in then. ' ' We can- 
not until the gate is opened.' ' Get it opened.' 
' I cannot ; it has to be opened from the inside. ' 
' Tell them to open it. ' The driver replied, 
' That is not it ; the porter must come out and 
speak to you.' 'Fetch her out then.' A 
woman came out and the gentleman said, ' I 
wish to go in and see the palace.' 'Yes, sir, 
you are perfectly welcome ; if you will only say 
"Thank you," I will unlock the gate.' 'Is 
that all? Thank you.' 'All right,' and she 
touched the latch, and the great gates swung 
open. ' ' 

The man stopped me, put out his hand in 
anguish of pain, and touched my hand, and 
said, "Stop, sir, stop, stop, I see it. 'Thank 
you, Lord ; thank you, Lord ; thank you, Lord ; 
thank you.'" I never saw such a look upon 
any human face, never, as there was upon that 
man's face when he entered the gate, having 
received the entrance for nothing but ' ' Thank 
you." 

You may say, "That is all very well; emo- 
tional excitement in the face of death." But 
what happened? The next day I came again, 
and I said, " I see he is not dead yet." "No." 
"How is he?" "Well, he has never slept 



190 THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 

since you were here, but he has spent the whole 
night saying, 'Thank you, Lord,' ever since 
you left him." "Oh," I said, "I know what 
it means; he has just got inside the gates of 
the park, and he is looking at the palace, and 
he will be in the palace directly." That man 
lived six months; the cancer turned, but he 
never once left that room. Was the conversion 
real, was the thanksgiving true? The chief part 
of his trade was on Sunday. Without one word 
from me, a great notice was put up on the door 
the next Sunday, 



THIS HOUSE IS CLOSED ON SUNDAYS 
FROM THIS DAY FORTH, 



signed by his name. That was the first fruit, 
and rather practical evidence. What, to lose 
his income? Yes, and trust his Lord. But be- 
sides this by the goodness of God, I saw during 
those six months no less than six open denomin- 
ated atheists give their hearts to God in that 
room, one after the other, brought there by that 
man. See the remarkable change, all through 
this little governess. One of these atheists 
turned out to be a man, whom, in my youth, I 
had heard blaspheming God before a great 
crowd and saying, ' ' How can there be any truth 



STAND FAST. 



191 



in the Bible when the pages contradict them- 
selves, one after the other. In one page it says, 
' No man shall see my face and live, ' and in an- 
other it says, ' Moses talked face to face with 
God. ' That is a lying book. I rushed into the 
crowd, and buttening np my coat, as if I was not 
a clergyman, I tried to speak to him. A gentle- 
man came up to me and said, ' ' Young man, you 
are too young for this work; I have followed 
this fellow for eight years, and you would better 
leave him alone." Seventeen years later this 
great strong man is on his knees waiting before 
God in the room of this dying publican. Breth- 
ren, enter God's inheritance with this one simple 
utterance, " Thank you, Lord; thank you." 

Twenty- one years ago, I was called to London 
to speak for the first time at the Mildmay Con- 
ference, and I was staying with a superintendent 
of Mildmay. On the last day of the Conference 
he said to me, " I wish you would go into our 
little hospital, and see a dying woman." I said, 
" Could I help her? I would be glad if I could, 
but I am very busy." "Help her?" he said, 
" No, I meant her to help you." I said, " I wish 
very much that I could go in." He said, "Never 
mind, I will tell you. I have just been to see 
her. She has had a stroke this morning, and 
she must die to-night. She is a girl of eighteen, 



* I need hardly say that a man may be face to face with one, and be blinded 



192 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



and when I sat down by her, I was not sure 
whether they had told her that she was dying, 
so I felt a certain shyness in having to tell her. 
After a moment, she said, ' Have they told you 
about me? ' ' Oh, yes, my child. Does it trouble 
you much ? ' There was such a look upon her 
face that it awed ^ne. She said, 'Trouble me? 
trouble me ? No, I am so glad, I am so glad! ' 
The look was so wonderful that I felt awed 
again, and did not know how to speak, but I 
said, ' I see that they have taken all the beds out 
of your room, and have left you alone; does not 
that trouble you ? Do you not mind being alone ?' 
' Mind it? mind it? No, I am so glad, because 
now 7 — never forget the words — ' because now I 
have Him all to myself, and he is so real to me ; 
is he not to you? ' " Captain Martin said, " No, 
my child, he is not as real to me as he is to you ; 
I wish to God that I felt what I can see in your 
face." 

Brethren, He is the Christ from whom to learn 
what love is ; he is a Christ by whom to live this 
life; he is a Christ with whom to go through 
death ; he is a real Keeper, a Saviour, a Friend 
at the last, and he is a Christ to go and live with 
forever in the glory of God. Will you take my 
Christ, and my God shall supply all your need, 
according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus ? 



THE DAILY PORTIOX. 



" Unto every one that entereth into the house of the Lord, his 
daily portion for their service in their charges according to their 
courses . . . for in their set office they sanctified themselves in 
holiness."— 17. Chron. xxxi. 16, 18. 

If the heart is truly filled with love, there is 
but oue thing apparently that can keep it in 
utter distress and that is the refusal of the loved 
one to apprehend the intensity of the lover's de- 
votion, and his purpose to do good to the object 
of his affections. I know not what more can be 
told than you have already heard to express the 
infinite love of God, and to make you feel that 
the heart of the Eternal is most wondrously kind. 
The purposes of God towards his creatures are 
simply wrapped up in that one little word love 
and he can never be satisfied in the one yearn- 
ing desire of his heart, to pour out upon men his 
infinite treasures, if they will but take according 
to their need. 

What would satisfy you in your religion, if 
you wrote out a catalogue of everything which 
you felt you could desire or above all that you 
could ask or think? Would you not write down 



194 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



at the very beginning, " Peace with God, so 
that I shonld not be afraid of him ? ' ' You 
know in your hearts that that is supplied by 
the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. You 
have but to say, 6 6 Amen, thank God, it is true ; 
I believe it. ' ' Then would you not write down, 
"Constant keeping from all evil, and the supply 
of every need ?' ' The Bible is full of that blessed 
truth at every point; the keeping Christ, the 
providing Lord, the comforting Friend, the ever- 
lasting Portion of Gods people. Whatever you 
wish, there stands the living God, and says I 
AM. God must give ; he cannot withhold ; he 
would not be God any more than a fountain 
would be a fountain if he were not perpetually 
pouring out his fullness upon all the universe. 
Suppose that you say, ' ' I want a future that is 
clear and full of provision for eternity." The 
Lord is our everlasting Portion ; the great God 
is ever saying I AM, and what more can men re- 
quire for the future ? The past, and the present, 
and the future are all set before us in the living 
God as being completely and everlastingly pro- 
vided for. And yet how many souls are satisfied 
in Christ, how many could say that they have 
found in him everything that their souls desire? 
Not many, I fear. 

Now, beloved, I wish to convince you of God's 
everlasting supply for what ever you can need now 
and in eternity. It is exceedingly difficult to 



THE DAILY POETIOX. 



195 



express to the sons of men the marvelous inten- 
tions, and the marvelous provisions of God, and 
the marvelous possibilities that lie before them, 
if they could only apprehend what God is to 
the creature, and what the creature is meant to be 
to God. 

Once more I turn to God's picture-book, the 
Old Testament, so graciously provided for us, 
that we may understand a little by God's deal- 
ings with his people Israel what he would do 
for spiritual Israel if we would fully trust him. 
Look at two or three verses in the Old Testament 
which speak of what God desires to be to his 
people, and to have his people to be to him. 

First in Deuteronomy xxxii. 9, we read, The 
Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of 
his inheritance." Xotice that carefully for it 
implies that the Almighty wishes to find in his 
chosen people his own portion and satisfaction, 
his inheritance for his personal enjoyment. But 
that is not enough. Look at Deuteronomy x. 8. 9, 
and see what God intends to be to his people : 
"The Lord separated the tribe of Levi to bear 
the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand 
before the Lord to minister unto him. and to 
bless in his name, unto this day. Wherefore 
Levi hath no part nor inheritance with his breth- 
ren ; the Lord is his inheritance, according as 
the Lord thy God promised him." 

When God separated the children of Israel 



196 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



from other nations, if the whole people would 
have drawn nigh to Mount Sinai and had heard the 
revelation of God's will, then God had one great 
purpose for them all, viz. , that they should be 
to him " a kingdom of priests" (Ex. xix. 6). 
The people drew back, notwithstanding that they 
had been delivered out of Egyptian bondage, and 
brought nigh to God at Mount Sinai. God said, 
' 6 1 must now reveal myself to you in holiness, 
but in order to see the revelation of my holiness, 
you must put away everything connected with 
the flesh and idolatry. " The people said, "The 
demand is too great," and they rejected the call 
of God to draw nigh to the mountain, and so 
could not be made a kingdom of priests unto 
God. Every soul in that nation was intended to 
take part in the priesthood, and to enjoy all its 
privileges : to draw nigh to God in his holy place, 
to speak to God concerning the people, to receive 
from God his grand revelations, to dwell in the 
presence of God, with the soul's desires provided 
for by God at every point, to be freed from all 
hard service and burden-bearing, never to know 
one shadow of care, one thought of a burden, or 
distress, but to rest in the Lord, to wait patiently 
for him, and to be assured that he would be not 
only their God, but their portion, their inherit- 
ance, their supply forever. 

Look again at Numbers xviii. 2 and see more 
of what God is to his people. We considered 



THE DAILY PORTION. 



197 



first the people, then the Levites, now Aaron. 
' ; Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, 
neither shalt thou have any part among them. 
I am thy part and thine inheritance among the 
children of Israel." The Lord's people is his 
portion ; the people's portion was to be the Lord, 
but they refused it, so that God was compelled 
to take out of the people a little portion, one 
tribe. ^Vhy was the tribe of Levi chosen? 
Because when an hour of testing came, and the 
people were to be questioned as to their idolatry, 
into which they had fallen, when Moses was in 
the Mount, the one tribe of Levi stood out and 
consecrated themselves to the Lord, girded their 
swords upon their sides, and stepped forward to 
avenge the cause of God against their own 
parents, their own brethren and all the tribes of 
Israel, that they might deliver Israel from the 
curse of God brought upon them through idola- 
try. From that moment the Lord appointed the 
tribe of Levi to be his chosen tribe, his priest- 
hood with constant, full fellowship with him. 
But alas, even the tribe of Levi neglected their 
privileges, and God had to take one family. 
Again and again God endeavored, first through 
the nation, then through the family of Levi to 
induce the people to draw nigh to him and take 
the privileges and powers of the priesthood. But 
no ; 1500 years go by, and the nations are no 
better for God having delivered one nation ; they 



198 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



are still in darkness and degradation, though 
Israel had been delivered to be a light to lighten 
the Gentiles. Thus, when Jesns was born, there 
was no one people, no one tribe, apparently no 
one family that would glorify God by whole- 
hearted consecration, and so God must now choose 
one man. The man Christ Jesus is born into the 
world to be what Israel and Levi and Aaron 
refused to be ; Christ becomes the man to glorify 
God his Father in all things before God and 
before the world. Then from the man Christ 
Jesus, there began from the day of pentecost to 
spread the riches of God's love to other men, 
who were taken possession of and drawn unto 
the man ; one after au other are drawn out of the 
darkness and degradation of sin into the comfort 
and the joy of resting in Christ. The moment 
that the church was constituted as a body of 
people who could be said to rest in Christ, God 
said to that church that he had taken them again 
to be a kingdom of priests " (Rev. i. 6; I. Pet. 
ii. 9). 

What are the privileges of the priesthood now 
accorded to the church of Jesus Christ? If we 
Christians had our privileges, there is absolutely 
nothing for which we could ask God that we 
have not been already supplied with in Christ 
Jesus. Men may ask what then is the need of 
prayer? In one sense there is no need of prayer 
from the Christian; in another sense, there is 



THE DAILY PORTION. 



199 



constant need of prayer. No need of prayer, 
because all things are yours if ye are Christ's, 
and Christ is God's own Son, drawing unceas- 
ingly from the riches of the Father and pouring 
them ont upon us. But in another sense there 
is need of prayer at every moment of our 
existence, because our eyes are not opened to see 
what God has given to us of privileges and of 
possibilities. Moment by moment we should be 
living a life of prayer. We can only get the 
benefit of these riches as moment by moment we 
open our mouths wide, for the Lord to fill them. 
Look up and say, ' ' Lord, open mine eyes that I 
may see the wondrous things out of thy law, and 
that I may have grace to take." I need not ask 
my God to provide anything further for me than 
he has provided in Christ, but I do need to ask 
God to teach me how to take, because I am so 
ignorant, and so helpless and so vile. I try to 
draw out a few benefits for myself upon earth, 
when all the riches of heaven are mine. " Who- 
soever will, let him take." How much ? Ac- 
cording to his need and his desire. God cannot 
give more ; it is for us to take more. 

But how can we learn the secret of a perpetual 
supply for perpetual need, which shall take us 
beyond the momentary requirements, and fill 
our souls with holy calm? The picture is given 
us in the priesthood of what God intended to be 
carried out first by the whole of Israel, then, as 



200 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



they rejected it, by the tribe of Levi, then, as 
they understood it not, by the family of Aaron, 
and then, as they missed it, God now and then 
gives us glimpses of what might be, if we were 
but faithful. In these verses from II. Chronicles 
we have one little glimpse of what we may enjoy 
from this day forth and forever. 

King Hezekiah was raised up as a reformer. 
He gave his heart to Gfod in his youth, and the 
moment he obtained possession of the kingdom, 
he set his heart upon God. He is, in this sense, 
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, the great 
Anointed of God, who is put before the world to 
show what God can do for his people. The 
moment Hezekiah came to the throne he desired 
to deliver Israel from their dark degradation; 
and he proceeded to call around him those who 
could fill the house of God not only with beauty, 
but men who would worship God according to 
his will. The priests whom he first called upon 
cleansed the temx3le of the filth found in it, 
which they threw into the Brook Kedron. Next 
the King called upon the people to draw nigh 
and offer through the priests their holy sacrifices, 
the burnt offerings and the sin offerings, while 
the temple was being reconsecrated to the service 
of the Lord. But the priests were not as ready 
for this holy business as they should have been, 
and the Levites rose, and were more zealous to 
consecrate and sanctify themselves than the 



THE DAILY PORTION. 



201 



priests, so that then and there the Lord appointed 
the Levites to the priesthood. The Levites 
were called to take their part in the holy work 
of the priesthood, offering the sacrifices for the 
people, drawing nigh to God, and receiving of 
him everything that the priests were meant to 
have — riches and honor and glory. Alas, they 
could not all take the glorious provision intended 
for them, because of their blindness and unbelief. 
TThat is that provision? " Unto everyone . . . 
his daily portion for his service . . . for they 
sanctified themselves in holiness." 

Can you not now understand a little of what 
God has purposed to give you? He has called 
you to the priesthood, that is, to yield yourselves 
to him, and that you may draw nigh to him into 
the very Holy of Holies, by the new and living 
way, Christ Jesus. " Draw nigh to God, and he 
will draw nigh to you." Draw nigh to God! 
Your heart shrinks back and you say, " I love 
the Lord, but I cleave to money, I cleave to 
pleasure ; I cannot come, God is too ho]y. ' ' Then 
down you go among the heathen, and there you 
tarry until you perish in the wilderness as did so 
many of Israel. They could not know what 
blessings God intended for his people. 

The first thing demanded of everyone who 
would be one of God's priests, is to come right 
into the presence of the Holy One. The incense 
is being offered by our High Priest, who has 



202 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



opened the way by tearing the veil from top to 
bottom. " By him we have access through one 
Spirit nnto the Father/' We may, therefore, 
go to God in perfect peace, notwithstanding 
his absolute holiness and our own unworthi- 
ness. 

But the priesthood was not only appointed to 
come nigh to God but that, having this privilege 
they should bring blessing to the world around. 
This is our second privilege, to magnify God 
before our nation and the nations round about 
by showing them that the priesthood has the 
glorious privilege of going unto God and of 
revealing God to the people. 

Moses is an illustration of this office in his 
holy communications with God in the Mount 
which all Israel might have enjoyed, when he 
came out with his face shining, though he 
wist it not. Thus God was glorified in the 
presence of the world in the only man that 
would take the glorious dignity of access to the 
dignity and majesty of God. Oh, beloved ! take 
your privilege as those Levites did in the days 
of Hezekiah. Cleanse the temple when you 
have seen God; go out and show him to the 
people. 

What is the immediate result? God starts 
those men in a life of abundant supply, of per- 
fect satisfaction, of constant dependence upon 
him, but of perfect assurance that they shall 



THE DAILY PORTION. 



203 



never lack anything that may be required in 
their office. 

The unsearchable riches of Christ are at onr 
command in every time of need, bnt are never to 
be laid up in store, hidden away in our own 
peculiar treasure-house. Day by day God's 
priesthood was commissioned to wait upon him 
at the altar, and as God touched the hearts of 
his people to bring sacrifices unto the altar, the 
priests should be abundantly supplied. That is 
what God is offering to you and to me. You 
may say to yourself, " It sounds well but it will 
never do for the wear and tear of daily life." It 
will, beloved ; the supply of God is for everyday 
life. God says that this supply is not to be 
only the priests, but for 1 ' their little ones, their 
wives, and their sons, and their daughters," 
because a few came out from among their breth- 
ren, and said : ' ' We sanctify ourselves in holi- 
ness this day unto the Lord " (II. Chron. xxxi. 
18). You shall lack for nothing needful if you 
sanctify yourself in holiness and if you do it with 
a pure heart fervently, and not simply wishing 
to test God. One man said to me : " Let us try 
it, sir, in a few things." "No, my brother, in 
every department of your being you must 
sanctify yourself in holiness; which means to 
give into God's hands everything you have with 
a desire that it shall be used for the glory of 
God from this day forth and f orevermore. Then, 



204 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



the Lord says : c ' Unto everyone that entereth 
the house of the Lord, his daily portion/' You 
have been looking ahead and have been fret- 
ting about the education of your children, be- 
cause you know not how the supply will come, 
how you can ever go through death, or face the 
sacrifice of this dear child to the mission field, 
and that one to death. Beloved, God never said 
look ahead, God said look up ; God never said 
look around, he only said look into the holy of 
holies ; God never said look down, he only said 
look into the face of the living God. ' ' Look unto 
me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." 
As we look beyond to-day and say, (e How can I 
expect that in the wear and tear of daily life, 
this holy peace is to be sustained? " the answer 
is, ' 1 Unto everyone that entereth into the house 
of the Lord, his daily portion for his service, 
according to his charges in his courses." God 
takes up every detail of life and says : ' ' For 
thy charges," whatever you have in charge; 
' £ According to your courses ; " you will have 
your turn. "In your office," wherever your 
work is, where you are, and where God wants 
you, there he undertakes to give you your daily 
supply. 

But, beloved, God never can give a daily 
supply for the life that is in the temple of the 
Lord, until the temple of the Lord is there, and 
men have entered into it. It is a remarkable 



THE DAILY PORTION. 



205 



fact with, regard to those Levites, that at the 
outset of their career as a separate people, they 
knew none of this rest and daily supply. Israel 
was chosen first as a people, but they rejected it. 
Then God chooses a tribe, but the tribe was not 
fitted for the blessing, and though they were set 
apart for God's business as the priesthood, they 
could not have it because their hearts were not 
right with God. What became of them ? The 
fourth chapter of the Book of Numbers tells 
how God appointed the tribe of Levi to a bur- 
densome service. They had a second-class serv- 
ice instead of a first-class service, for their con- 
secration at the time of the idolatry of Israel, 
they were admitted into something better than 
the people, but their service, after all, was one 
of burden-bearing. They were not wholly given 
to the Lord, and did not trust him as they 
should, and the people could not seek at their 
lips the word of wisdom and the word of power. 
That burden- bearing continued all through the 
journey in the wilderness, throughout their 
sojourn in Canaan, until Solomon arose as the 
Prince of Peace and built the temple of the Lord. 
When the temple of the Lord was completed, 
and was being consecrated to the Lord, the ark 
was taken into the temple, then the staves were 
pulled ,f rom its sides to show that the burden 
bearing of Levi was ended, and that the people 
might, like the priests, enter into the temple of 



206 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



the Lord for rest (I. Kings viii. 8). Solomon 
built the temple of which the Lord said, "Here 
will I rest, and my people shall rest. ' ' Had they 
accepted their privilege, Levi would never again 
have known the burdensome service which so 
many Christians now experience. 

Brethren, God is calling all his people, and if 
they refuse then he calls a tribe; if the tribe 
refuses, he calls a family ; if the family refuses, 
he calls a man. Each one must answer for 
himself whether or not he will take the blessed 
privilege of the life of rest, and enter into the 
temple of the Lord, and look upon Christ Jesus, 
our Ark, with the mercy seat and the holy 
cherubim, and the law of God in his heart, and 
the manna to show the supply. ' ' Here will I 
rest, ' ' saith the Lord ; and we may answer back, 
"Here will I rest, Lord, for I have a supply 
of every need." 

God is closely linked to his people, if they 
will be linked to him, and as we go into the 
Holy of Holies to look into the face of God, as 
he shows his glory upon Christ Jesus, the Ark 
between the cherubim, God's voice comes out to 
us, and there is peace and calm and fellowship 
and communion ; we are with God in the presence 
of Christ. 

Brethren, what more do you want? Will you 
trust your Lord? I know that you will encoun- 
ter in your daily life difficulties absolutely in- 



THE DAILY PORTION. 



207 



superable by any human power, but you are 
called to pass through Jesus Christ into the 
presence of God, and are to come out no more. 

YTould it not be better to leave to-morrow 
alone? That is what is troubling men; to-mor- 
row's tenrptations, to-morrow's difficulties, to- 
morrow's burdens, to-morrow's duties. Martin 
Luther in his Autobiography says, ' ' I have one 
preacher that I love better than any other upon 
earth ; it is my little tame robin which preaches 
to me daily. I put his crumbs upon my window- 
sill, especially at night. He hops on to the sill, 
when he wants his supply, and takes as much as 
he desires to satisfy his need. From thence he 
always hops on to a little tree close by, and lifts 
up his voice to God, and sings his carol of praise 
and gratitude, tucks his little head under his 
wing, and goes fast asleep, and leaves to-morrow 
to look after itself. He is the best preacher that 
I have on earth." 

Brethren, the best preaching that we can give 
each other in this world is to say,. trust in the 
Lord, wait on the Lord, fret not thyself in any 
wise to do evil, with a calm assurance for to-day 
that to be poor is best. As a poor, beggarly priest, 
without any inheritance, property or riches, hang 
on God. The Saviour, our High Priest, himself 
taught us to say, "Our Father, which art in 
Heaven . . . give us this day our daily bread." 
Our daily portion for body, soul, and spirit. 



208 



THE VICTORIOUS LIFE. 



Leave to-morrow with Jesus, for he knows how 
to steal the bitter from life's woes; he knows 
what his priests require, and all that he has 
ever said to us is, " JVow is the day of salvation ; 
to-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your 
hearts." Israel could not enter in because of 
unbelief. Let us, therefore, knowing that the 
promise is given to us of entering into his rest, 
see to it that none of us should come short in 
any wise of the unspeakable blessing that is 
offered to us of going unto God for holy com- 
munion, coming out from God to be a blessing 
to the people, and waiting upon God every 
moment of our lives for every supply that our 
souls could desire, because he says, "Ask, and 
it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, 
knock and it shall be opened unto you." 

How can you say no to such a God, who is 
able and willing to give all that we can ask or 
think, all through his blessed Son Jesus Christ 
our Lord, who has been appointed of God for 
one purpose, to save to the very uttermost all 
that come unto God by him. I commend you 
to God and to the word of his grace, which is 
able to build you up, and to give you an inherit- 
ance among them which are sanctified unto 
holiness through faith, which is in Christ Jesus 
our Lord. 



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Two Fundamental Laws of Christ. VII. Popular Discontent. 
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" Its facts are collated and marshalled -svith rare skill. It is 
a powerful and patriotic book. It stirs the blood ; it warms ; 
it inspires ; it thrills and it instructs. It ought to be read by 
everv citizen of the Republic ; it will be read by all our people 
who wish to keep abreast of needful knowledge regarding our 
cou n try. " — Christian Inquirer. 

"If the means were at our command, we know of no service 
we could perform more practical and effective for the cause of 
truth and righteousness, than to place a copy of ' Our Country ' 
in the hands of every man and woman in the land. "' — Christian 
at Work. 

" Words are feeble in the recommendation of this book. _ It 
enlightens, stirs, quickens, and makes the blood boil with 
patriotic zeal and Christian vehemence." — Pulpit Treasury. 

" No publication of the present decade has awakened a more 
profound and intelligent interest. In its present form, and it 
is still compact and easily handled, we again commend it to 
all Christian and patriotic Amerkan citizens. "—New York 
Observer. 

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SERMONS BY THEEE FAMOUS PREACHERS. 

STIRRING THE EAGLETS NEST, and OTHER 
PRACTICAL DISCOURSES. By Rev. Theodore 
L. Cutler, D.D. 12mo. cloth, with a photogravure 
portrait of the author, $1.25. 

A collection of eighteen sermons thoroughly representative 
of the author's characteristic style and speech. 

"In this volume we have this great Presbyterian divine, 
whose name has deservedly become a household word in 
America, at his best. They are strong, clear, spiritual, help- 
ful." — Boston Traveller. 

" It is such sermons as these that are worth publishing and 
have a permanent valne." — Presbyterian Journal. 

THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL. Twelve Sermons. 

delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, 

England. By Arthur T. Peerson. 16rno, cloth, 

gilt top, $1.25. 

" The}* stand as examples of Dr. Pierson's conspicuous abil- 
ity as an extempore speaker. The sermons ring out the good 
old Gospel in sweet clarion tones. There is no uncertainty 
as to their doctrinal orthodoxy, nor is there any lack of adap- 
tation in them for winning souls." — N. Y. Observer. 

MILK AND MEAT. Twenty-four Sermons. By 
Rev. A. C. Dixon, D.D.. Pastor of the Hanson Place 
Baptist Church, Brooklyn, X. Y. 12mo, cloth, 
$1.25. 

These discourses which have been delivered to very large and 
enthusiastic audiences, seek in book form a still wider" hear- 
ing. The author's nervous, energetic, and picturesque style 
of exposition gives his spoken and written words an unflagging 
interest, which holds the auditor and reader to the end. Apt- 
ness of illustration and pointed and forceful presentation 
characterize the book: while avoiding the grotesque, it is 
thoroughly popular, entertaining, and natural. 

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EXPOSITORY THOUGHTS ON THE GOSPELS. 
By Rt. Rev. J. C. Ryle, D.B., Bishop of Liverpool. 
7 vols., 12mo, cloth, in a set, $8.00. Matthew, 
1 vol. ; Mark, 1 vol. ; Luke, 2 vols. ; John, 3 vols. 
Each volume, $1.25. 

The seveD volumes, convenient in size and aggregating 
nearly 3000 pages, are devoted as follows : one to Matthew, 
one to Mark, two to Luke, three to John. As indicated by 
the title, the work is pre-eminently expository in character 
In his treatment of Matthew, M;irk, and Luke the author 
divides the text of sacred Scripture into passages of about 
twelve verses each, which, taken as a whole, serves as a basis 
for a continuous series of short, plain "Expositions." To this 
method he adds, when treating the Gospel by John, the verse 
by verse exegesis. The practical lessons and inferences from 
the passages given are followed by notes explanatory, doctrinal, 
and hortatory, and the views of other commentators are pre- 
sented from time to time. 

"It is the kernels without the shells." — Christian Union. 

" It is the master work of a master workman, and shall 
abide among the noblest works of the noblest expositor of the 
truth of God." — Religious Herald. 

"As practical expositions, these Notes on the Gospels are 
not excelled by any works on the Gospels in our language." — 
Evangelical Repository. 

"We are always glad to get a new book from the pen of 
this admirable writer. His thoughts are warm, earnest, spir- 
itual, and practical. Indeed there are few modern writers who 
more happily combine the instructive with the popular style 
of writing." — New York Observer. 

"We regard them as taking the lead of all works of the 
same kind in respect to soundness of doctrinal views, and in 
regard to clear and consistent statements pertaining to the fun- 
damental points of redemption. The ' Thoughts' are critical, 
historical, exegetical, and devotional, and will be of permanent 
value in the family, in the school, and in the instructions of 
the House of God." — Episcopalian. 

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SPUEGEON'S LAST AND BEST WORK. 

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM: A Popular 
Exposition of the Gospel according to Mat- 
thew. By C. H. Spurgeon. With Introductory 
Note by Mrs. C. H. Spurgeox, and an Introduction 
to the American Edition by Arthur T. Pierson. 
12nio, cloth, 512 pp. #1.50. 

This commentary on ihe Gospel according to Matthew is 
the latest and ripest of his life's labors. It will be found a 
tree, laden with rich fruit ; and evidencing a soil singularly- 
fertile, and the culture which bespeaks a divine husbandman. 
It is his latest work, and has in a sense the aroma of his dying 
days, and is a simple, brief, and charming memorial of the 
most effective popular preacher of his age. Every page is, 
like his sermons, full of his Master, and yet sparkling wifh his 
own unique individualit}-. 

"This book is the rich fruit of an experience of the needs 
uf Christian readers more full and varied than has been given 
to many men. It would be gilding refined gold to recommend 
the expository work of Spurgeon to our readers : they all know 
what it is. But for their information we may explain that 
text by text, or two or three texts taken together, the Gospel 
is gone over with brief, practical, pungent, and very spiritual 
comment, rising at times into eloquence such as Spurgeon was 
master of. The titles of the various sections are in themselves 
illuminating, giving in a very few words a comprehensive view 
of the contents of the section. In this book its consecrated 
writer, being dead, yet speaketh to an audience larger, we 
believe, than any that ever heard his voice in life." — Xew York 
Evangelist. 

This is a work in Mr. Spurgeon 's usual style, full of good 
thoughts plainly expressed. The idea of the title is wrought 
into every part of the book. Every section has something 
about either the King or the Kingdom. The work is topically 
arranged, and so has a topical Table of contents, such as the 
Pedigree of the King, The Birth of the King, The King Ap- 
pearing, and The King Assailed, and so on to the end of its 
twenty-eight sections " — Church Advocate. 
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THREE STANDARD BOOKS ON MISSIONS. 

THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS ; or, The Voice Out 
of the Cloud. By Arthur T. Pierson. Paper, 
35 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
" One of the most important books to the Cause ol" Foreign 
Missions— and through them to Home Missions also — which- 
ever has been written. It should be in every library and 
every household. It should be read, studied, taken to heart, 
and prayed over." — Congregationalism 

THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE OF MISSIONS. A 

Series of Lectures delivered at New Brunswick, 
N. J., before the Theological Seminary of the Re- 
formed Church in America upon the "Graves" 
Foundation in 1891. By Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, 
D.D. 16mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25. 
"The book is thick-sown with striking illustrations, rich in 
the lore of missionary heroism, burning with love for souls, 
fresh and vigorous in its exposition of Scripture. Nowhere 
have we seen a more stirring presentation of the Christian's 
function of co-working, co-suffering, co-witnessing with the 
Triune God." — Post-Oraduate and Wooster Quarterly. 

THE GREAT VALUE AND SUCCESS OF FOREIGN 
MISSIONS. Proved by distinguished witnesses. 
By Rev. John Liggins, with an Introduction by 
Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. 12mo, 2*9 pages; 
paper, 35 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 
A powerful presentation of overwhelming evidence from 
independent sources, largely that of Diplomatic Ministers, 
Viceroys, Governors, Military and Naval Officers, Consuls. 
Scientific and other Travellers in Heathen and Mohammedan 
countries, and in India and the British Colonies. It also con- 
tains leading facts and late statistics of the missions. 

" A grand and irrefutable reply to those who are fond oi 
decrying missions." — Christian at Work. 

"An overwhelming mass of testimony." — Springfield Re- 
publican. 

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